No abstract

Background: Over the past 10–15 years, a substantial amount of work has been done by the scientific, regulatory, and business communities to elucidate the effects and risks of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment.Objective: This review was undertaken to identify key outstanding issues regarding the effects of PPCPs on human and ecological health in order to ensure that future resources will be focused on the most important areas.Data sources: To better understand and manage the risks of PPCPs in the environment, we used the “key question” approach to identify the principle issues that need to be addressed. Initially, questions were solicited from academic, government, and business communities around the world. A list of 101 questions was then discussed at an international expert workshop, and a top-20 list was developed. Following the workshop, workshop attendees ranked the 20 questions by importance.Data synthesis: The top 20 priority questions fell into seven categories: a) prioritization of substances for assessment, b) pathways of exposure, c) bioavailability and uptake, d) effects characterization, e) risk and relative risk, f ) antibiotic resistance, and g) risk management.Conclusions: A large body of information is now available on PPCPs in the environment. This exercise prioritized the most critical questions to aid in development of future research programs on the topic.

No abstract

There is increasing scientific and public concern over the presence of microplastics in the natural environment. We present the results of a systematic review of the literature to assess the weight of evidence for microplastics causing environmental harm. We conclude that microplastics do occur in surface water and sediments. Fragments and fibers predominate, with beads making up only a small proportion of the detected microplastic types. Concentrations detected are orders of magnitude lower than those reported to affect endpoints such as biochemistry, feeding, reproduction, growth, tissue inflammation and mortality in organisms. The evidence for microplastics acting as a vector for hydrophobic organic compounds to accumulate in organisms is also weak. The available data therefore suggest that these materials are not causing harm to the environment. There is, however, a mismatch between the particle types, size ranges, and concentrations of microplastics used in laboratory tests and those measured in the environment. Select environmental compartments have also received limited attention. There is an urgent need for studies that address this mismatch by performing high quality and more holistic monitoring studies alongside more environmentally realistic effects studies. Only then will we be able to fully characterize risks of microplastics to the environment to support the introduction of regulatory controls that can make a real positive difference to environmental quality. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:2776–2796. © 2018 SETAC