Importance of environmental and biomass dynamics in predicting chemical exposure in ecological risk assessment

Morselli, Melissa; Semplice, Matteo; Laender, Frederik De; Brink, Paul J. Van den; Guardo, Antonio Di

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.04.072

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Scientists active in the development of environmental fate and transport models recognize the importance of including multiple sources of contamination. For instance, models widely used in the United States and Europe incorporate multiple point sources of contamination including the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) 31 , ChimERA Fate 32 , and Stream-EU 33 . The inclusion of field survey information and landscape-level use for pesticides is easily accomplished because these data are already included separately in the most current ecological risk assessments used for pesticide regulation 34 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Rumschlag

Rohr

Bessler

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Pesticide in Water Calculator (PWC) is a fate and transport model used by the Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada to estimate pesticide exposures in lentic freshwater ecosystems and make pesticide registration decisions. We leverage over 600,000 field measurements of 31 common insecticides and herbicides to test whether incorporating environmental sampling effort (number of times a pesticide is sampled) and landscape-level contaminant use (national application amount) can improve PWC validation and prediction, respectively. We found that maximum measured concentrations of 38% of herbicides and 42% of insecticides exceeded maximum estimated environmental concentrations (EECs) generated by the PWC, suggesting that EECs often do not represent worst-case exposure. For lentic systems, variance in pesticide field measurements explained by EECs increased by 50% when sampling effort was included. For lotic systems, variance explained increased by only 4%, most likely because lotic systems are sampled over 4.9 times as much as lentic systems. Including landscape-level use more than doubled the ability of the PWC to predict maximum pesticides concentrations in lentic systems. Exposure characterization in risk assessment can be improved by including sampling effort in model validation and landscape-level use in predictions, thus providing more defensible environmental standards and regulations.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Rumschlag

Rohr

Bessler

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[61][62][63][64][65] Multimedia models of the 1990s included bulk compartments for air, water, soil, and sediment. Several additional environmental compartments, sub-compartments and processes have been incorporated into fate and exposure models, including terrestrial and aquatic vegetation, [66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79] DOC in terrestrial and aquatic systems, 76,80,81 ice and snow, [82][83][84] different types of aerosols, 85 mountainous regions, 86,87 and the effect of intermittent rain. [88][89][90] The fundamental concept underlying all fate and exposure models is the integration of chemical transport, transfer and degradation processes into mass balance equations for the chemical investigated.…”

Section: Emission Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental fate and exposure models: advances and challenges in 21^st century chemical risk assessment

Guardo

Gouin

MacLeod

et al. 2018

Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Environmental fate and exposure models are a powerful means to integrate information on chemicals, their partitioning and degradation behaviour, the environmental scenario and the emissions in order to compile a picture of chemical distribution and fluxes in the multimedia environment. A 1995 pioneering book, resulting from a series of workshops among model developers and users, reported the main advantages and identified needs for research in the field of multimedia fate models. Considerable efforts were devoted to their improvement in the past 25 years and many aspects were refined; notably the inclusion of nanomaterials among the modelled substances, the development of models at different spatial and temporal scales, the estimation of chemical properties and emission data, the incorporation of additional environmental media and processes, the integration of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis in the simulations. However, some challenging issues remain and require research efforts and attention: the need of methods to estimate partition coefficients for polar and ionizable chemical in the environment, a better description of bioavailability in different environments as well as the requirement of injecting more ecological realism in exposure predictions to account for the diversity of ecosystem structures and functions in risk assessment. Finally, to transfer new scientific developments into the realm of regulatory risk assessment, we propose the formation of expert groups that compare, discuss and recommend model modifications and updates and help develop practical tools for risk assessment.

show abstract

“…Exposure and ecological scenarios share a number of important variables that influence both exposure and effects (De Laender et al ; Morselli et al ). For example, temperature may influence exposure concentrations through temperature‐dependent degradation kinetics, but it may also influence the population response through temperature‐dependent growth kinetics (Heugens et al ).…”

Section: Environmental Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sediment transport increases dramatically during high‐flow events (Dale et al ). Organic matter varies with seasonal cycles of primary and secondary production (Morselli et al ). At this tier, exposure models should provide suitable exposure input data for ecological effect modeling.…”

Section: Development Of Environmental Scenarios In a Tiered Risk Assementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regardless of the model design, freely dissolved concentration should be the common metric at the interface between exposure and effect assessment because it reflects external exposure as seen by organisms. Examples of exposure scenarios of simple lotic systems designed for the integration of exposure and ecological models demonstrated the importance of spatiotemporal resolution in particulate and dissolved organic matter driven by seasonal dynamics in primary productivity on water‐dissolved concentrations (Morselli et al ).…”

Section: Development Of Environmental Scenarios In a Tiered Risk Assementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Toward refined environmental scenarios for ecological risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals in freshwater environments

Franco

Price

Marshall

et al. 2016

Integr Environ Assess Manag

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Current regulatory practice for chemical risk assessment suffers from the lack of realism in conventional frameworks. Despite significant advances in exposure and ecological effect modeling, the implementation of novel approaches as high-tier options for prospective regulatory risk assessment remains limited, particularly among general chemicals such as down-the-drain ingredients. While reviewing the current state of the art in environmental exposure and ecological effect modeling, we propose a scenario-based framework that enables a better integration of exposure and effect assessments in a tiered approach. Globalto catchment-scale spatially explicit exposure models can be used to identify areas of higher exposure and to generate ecologically relevant exposure information for input into effect models. Numerous examples of mechanistic ecological effect models demonstrate that it is technically feasible to extrapolate from individual-level effects to effects at higher levels of biological organization and from laboratory to environmental conditions. However, the data required to parameterize effect models that can embrace the complexity of ecosystems are large and require a targeted approach. Experimental efforts should, therefore, focus on vulnerable species and/or traits and ecological conditions of relevance. We outline key research needs to address the challenges that currently hinder the practical application of advanced model-based approaches to risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2017;13:233-248. C 2016 SETAC

show abstract

Importance of environmental and biomass dynamics in predicting chemical exposure in ecological risk assessment

Cited by 18 publications

References 40 publications

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Environmental fate and exposure models: advances and challenges in 21^st century chemical risk assessment

Toward refined environmental scenarios for ecological risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals in freshwater environments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Importance of environmental and biomass dynamics in predicting chemical exposure in ecological risk assessment

Cited by 18 publications

References 40 publications

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Evaluating Improvements to Exposure Estimates from Fate and Transport Models by Incorporating Environmental Sampling Effort and Landscape-level Contaminant Use

Environmental fate and exposure models: advances and challenges in 21st century chemical risk assessment

Toward refined environmental scenarios for ecological risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals in freshwater environments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Environmental fate and exposure models: advances and challenges in 21^st century chemical risk assessment