Boric acid as reference substance for ecotoxicity tests in tropical artificial soil.

Reference substances are recommended to evaluate the quality of laboratory test species and the reliability of ecotoxicity data. Boric acid (BA) has been recommended as reference substance in some standardized tests in OECD soil, but no data are available for Tropical Artificial Soil (TAS). For this purpose, avoidance tests with Eisenia andrei, lethality tests with E.