Chemical fate, bioconcentration, and environmental effects testing: Proposed testing and decision criteria

Abstract

Chemicals should have a minimum amount of available chemical fate, bioconcentration, and environmental effects data to identify those chemicals with potentially problematic environmental partitioning or persistence, or those with potential to bioconcentrate or cause adverse effects. Professional judgment, estimates of a chemical's mode(s) of action or mechanism of action, and its susceptibility to rapid transport or transformation should be utilized to determine the types of chemical fate, bioeoncentration, and environmental effects data that should be available. Data-supported decision criteria should be used to develop additional data to characterize the persistence, bioconcentration, and adverse effects of chemicals that have been identified as potentially problematic. To facilitate an understanding of minimum chemical fate and bioconcentration data that should be available, recommended chemical fate and bioconcentration data from previously published testing schemes or approaches were evaluated. For environmental effects data, the types of organisms recommended for developing aquatic toxicity data in previously published testing schemes or approaches were evaluated. To facilitate a n understanding of available testing decision criteria, those criteria that were used (as of December 31, 1988) to propose or require chemical fate, bioconcentration, on aquatic toxicity tests under section 4 of the Toxic Substances Control Act and those criteria recommended in previously reported testing schemes were evaluated. Based on this comprehensive evaluation it was possible to propose (1) a base set of chemical fate and aquatic toxicity tests, (2) organisms for conducting aquatic toxicity tests, and (3) decision logic and testing scheme for developing chemical fate and aquatic toxicity test data.* Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the EPA. Views do not necessarily reflect EPA policies.

Testing the influence of chemicals on soil autotrophic ammonium oxidation

“…The influence of a large number of substances on ammonium oxidation can thus be determined in a relatively short time. The no-effect concentration, which is used in evaluations of the effects of various chemicals in the environment (Walker, 1990), can also easily be determined.…”

An overview of the use of quantitative structure-activity relationships for ranking and prioritizing large chemical inventories for environmental risk assessments

“…The Administrator may then recommend that the manufacturers of these chemicals provide data to better document the potential exposure or hazard associated with a substance (for a more complete summary of the ITC process, see [2,17].) The ITC has developed and used numerous procedures to screen over 45,000 chemicals on the TSCA Inventory [2,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. New chemicals are addressed under Section 5 of TSCA, which requires manufacturers to submit information on the chemical structure/identity, production volume, by-products, intended use, environmental release, disposal practices, and human exposure levels.…”

“…These triggers are also used to assist in defining the type of toxicity tests that should be conducted. This toxicity testing scheme is described in more detail in [17,21].…”

Detailed Review Paper on Aquatic Testing Methods for Pesticides and Industrial Chemicals

“…• Walker (1990), US EPA (1988) (industrial chemicals, TSCA): for most sensitive species at tier 1, another species from this trophic level/taxa should be tested for acute toxicity (level 1, 2) (C7)…”