Ecological risk assessors face increasing demands to assess more chemicals, with greater speed and accuracy, and to do so using fewer resources and experimental animals. New approaches in biological and computational sciences may be able to generate mechanistic information that could help in meeting these challenges. However, to use mechanistic data to support chemical assessments, there is a need for effective translation of this information into endpoints meaningful to ecological risk-effects on survival, development, and reproduction in individual organisms and, by extension, impacts on populations. Here we discuss a framework designed for this purpose, the adverse outcome pathway (AOP). An AOP is a conceptual construct that portrays existing knowledge concerning the linkage between a direct molecular initiating event and an adverse outcome at a biological level of organization relevant to risk assessment. The practical utility of AOPs for ecological risk assessment of chemicals is illustrated using five case examples. The examples demonstrate how the AOP concept can focus toxicity testing in terms of species and endpoint selection, enhance across-chemical extrapolation, and support prediction of mixture effects. The examples also show how AOPs facilitate use of molecular or biochemical endpoints (sometimes referred to as biomarkers) for forecasting chemical impacts on individuals and populations. In the concluding sections of the paper, we discuss how AOPs can help to guide research that supports chemical risk assessments and advocate for the incorporation of this approach into a broader systems biology framework.

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The effects of various water chemistry parameters on the toxicity of copper to larval fathead minnows were investigated. Increased pH, hardness, sodium, dissolved organic matter, and suspended solids each caused toxicity to decrease on the basis of total copper concentrations. In contrast, added potassium resulted in increased toxicity. Alkalinity had no observed effect on total copper LC50s, but its effects might have been masked by those of the cations added with it. In most cases, the effects of water chemistry were found to be similar for different endpoints (growth, survival at different durations), but there were differences in the relative magnitude of some effects across these endpoints. Over all experimental treatments, 96-h total copper LC50s varied 60-fold. Every water chemistry parameter also caused toxicity to vary significantly when expressed on the basis of cupric ion selective electrode measurements, sometimes more so than on the basis of total copper. Therefore, this study does not support attributing to cupric ion a singular importance in regulating toxicity to this test organism. A variety of copper species might be contributing to toxicity and it is evident that toxicity is also affected by water chemistry in ways not related to copper speciation.

The ions Na , K , Ca , Mg , Cl , SO , and HCO /CO (referred to in the present study as "major ions") are present in all freshwaters and physiologically required by aquatic organisms but can increase to harmful levels from a variety of anthropogenic activities. It is also known that the toxicities of major ion salts can vary depending on the concentrations of other ions, and understanding these relationships is key to establishing appropriate environmental limits. The authors present a series of experiments with Ceriodaphnia dubia to evaluate the acute toxicity of 12 major ion salts and to determine how toxicity of these salts varies as a function of background water chemistry. All salts except CaSO and CaCO were acutely toxic below saturation, with the lowest median lethal concentrations found for K salts. All 10 salts that showed toxicity also showed some degree of reduced toxicity as the ionic content of the background water increased. Experiments that independently varied Ca:Mg ratio, Na:K ratio, Cl:SO ratio, and alkalinity/pH demonstrated that Ca concentration was the primary factor influencing the toxicities of Na and Mg salts, whereas the toxicities of K salts were primarily influenced by the concentration of Na. These experiments also indicated multiple mechanisms of toxicity and suggested important aspects of dosimetry; the toxicities of K, Mg, and Ca salts were best related to the chemical activity of the cation, whereas the toxicities of Na salts also reflected an influence of the anions and were well correlated with osmolarity. Understanding these relationships between major ion toxicity and background water chemistry should aid in the development of sensible risk-assessments and regulatory standards. Environ Toxicol Chem 2016;35:3039-3057. Published 2016 Wiley Periodicals Inc. on behalf of SETAC. This article is a US government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.

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