Passive Dosing of Petroleum and Essential Oil UVCBs-Whole Mixture Toxicity Testing at Controlled Exposure.

Petroleum products and essential oils are produced and used in large amounts and are categorized as "Substances of Unknown or Variable composition, Complex reaction products or Biological materials (UVCBs)." These UVCBs are notorious difficult-to-test substances, since they are complex mixtures of hydrophobic and volatile compounds. This study introduces two passive dosing (PD) approaches for whole UVCB toxicity testing: (1) headspace PD applies the UVCB and purified lipid oil as a donor to control exposure via the headspace and (2) silicone rod PD applies UVCB-loaded silicone rods to control exposure via an aqueous test medium and headspace.

Surface-Related Toxicity of Polystyrene Beads to Nematodes and the Role of Food Availability.

Microplastics released into freshwaters from anthropogenic sources settle in the sediments, where they may pose an environmental threat to benthic organisms. However, few studies have considered the ecotoxicological hazard of microplastic particles for nematodes, one of the most abundant taxa of the benthic meiofauna. This study investigated the toxic effects of polystyrene (PS) beads (0.

Effects of α-pinene on life history traits and stress tolerance in the springtail Folsomia candida.

Volatile monoterpenes are emitted in large quantities to both air and soil by many plant species. While studies have addressed effects of monoterpenes on aboveground invertebrates, we have much poorer understanding of the possible effects of monoterpenes on soil invertebrates. Monoterpenes play a protective role in some plant species during heat and water stress, and therefore may provide similar protection against abiotic stress to soil invertebrates.

Headspace Passive Dosing of Volatile Hydrophobic Organic Chemicals from a Lipid Donor-Linking Their Toxicity to Well-Defined Exposure for an Improved Risk Assessment.

High hydrophobicity and volatility of chemicals often lead to substantial experimental challenges but were here utilized in headspace passive dosing (HS-PD) to establish and maintain exposure: the pure chemical served as a passive dosing donor for controlling exposure at saturation, whereas triglyceride oil containing the chemical was used to control lower exposure levels. These donor solutions were added to glass inserts placed in the closed test systems. Mass balance calculations confirmed a dominant donor capacity for all chemicals except isooctane.

Headspace passive dosing of volatile hydrophobic chemicals - Aquatic toxicity testing exactly at the saturation level.

It is challenging to conduct aquatic tests with highly hydrophobic and volatile chemicals while avoiding substantial sorptive and evaporative losses. A simple and versatile headspace passive dosing (HS-PD) method was thus developed for such chemicals: The pure liquid test chemical was added to a glass insert, which was then placed with the open end in the headspace of a closed test system containing aqueous test medium. The test chemical served as the dominating partitioning donor for establishing and maintaining maximum exposure levels in the headspace and aqueous solution, without direct contact between the donor and the test medium.

Deciphering mechanisms of malathion toxicity under pulse exposure of the freshwater cladoceran Daphnia magna.

The organophosphate pesticide (OP) malathion is highly toxic to freshwater invertebrates, including the cladoceran Daphnia magna, a widely used test organism in ecotoxicology. To assess whether toxic effects of malathion are driven primarily by exposure concentration or exposure duration, D. magna was pulse exposed to equivalent integrated doses (duration × concentration): 3 h × 16 μg/L, 24 h × 2 μg/L, and 48 h × 1 μg/L.