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EVALUATION OF LITERATURE ESTABLISHING SCREENING LEVELS FOR TERRESTRIAL PLANTS/INVERTEBRATES
Citation:
Kinzinger, B. P., C L. Russom, G. D. Grunwald, C. Kowalczak, A. Pilli, AND C. N. Podeszwa. EVALUATION OF LITERATURE ESTABLISHING SCREENING LEVELS FOR TERRESTRIAL PLANTS/INVERTEBRATES. Presented at 22nd Annual SETAC Meeting, Baltimore, MD, November 11-15, 2001.
Description:
Scientific publications often lack key information on experimental design or do not follow appropriate test methods and therefore cannot be used in deriving reliable benchmarks. Risk based soil screening levels (Eco-SSLs) are being established for chemicals of concern to terrestrial plants and soil invertebrates. The Eco-SSL process represents the collaborative effort of a multi-stakeholder workgroup consisting of Federal, state, consulting, industry and academic participants. In order to identify applicable studies, a thorough literature search was conducted using search criteria and databases/review articles. Once papers were received, each article was screened using predefined "acceptance criteria" such as source of the data , exposure to a single chemical stressor, reporting of chemical concentration and duration, type/source of soil, reporting the pH and organic matter content of test soil, appropriate use of controls, use of a sufficient number of doses/concentrations, reporting ecologically relevant endpoints, and sufficient taxonomic information to identify species tested. This acceptance criteria ensured that sufficient detail on study design and test methods was presented to allow for inter-study comparisons and selection of best available data for use in deriving the Eco-SSLs for terrestrial plants and invertebrates approximately 3,000 papers were identified from electronic literature searches and an additional 2,000 papers were identified through manually searching review bibliographies. The acceptance criteria were applied to more than 5,000 papers with 390 publications having sufficient information to be used in the final evaluation process and Eco-SSL derivation. A summary of the reasons for publication failing the acceptance criteria will be presented.