Ecotoxicity characterization of chemicals: Global recommendations and implementation in USEtox.

Chemicals emitted to the environment affect ecosystem health from local to global scale, and reducing chemical impacts has become an important element of European and global sustainability efforts. The present work advances ecotoxicity characterization of chemicals in life cycle impact assessment by proposing recommendations resulting from international expert workshops and work conducted under the umbrella of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative in the GLAM project (Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators). We include specific recommendations for broadening the assessment scope through proposing to introduce additional environmental compartments beyond freshwater and related ecotoxicity indicators, as well as for adapting the ecotoxicity effect modelling approach to better reflect environmentally relevant exposure levels and including to a larger extent chronic test data.

Scientific integrity issues in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry: Improving research reproducibility, credibility, and transparency.

High-profile reports of detrimental scientific practices leading to retractions in the scientific literature contribute to lack of trust in scientific experts. Although the bulk of these have been in the literature of other disciplines, environmental toxicology and chemistry are not free from problems. While we believe that egregious misconduct such as fraud, fabrication of data, or plagiarism is rare, scientific integrity is much broader than the absence of misconduct.

High-throughput screening and environmental risk assessment: State of the science and emerging applications.

In 2007 the United States National Research Council (NRC) published a vision for toxicity testing in the 21st century that emphasized the use of in vitro high-throughput screening (HTS) methods and predictive models as an alternative to in vivo animal testing. In the present study we examine the state of the science of HTS and the progress that has been made in implementing and expanding on the NRC vision, as well as challenges to implementation that remain. Overall, significant progress has been made with regard to the availability of HTS data, aggregation of chemical property and toxicity information into online databases, and the development of various models and frameworks to support extrapolation of HTS data.

Effects of coal fly ash on tree swallow reproduction in Watts Bar Reservoir, Tennessee.

Coal-fly ash was released in unprecedented amounts (4.1 × 10(6) m(3) ) into the Emory River from the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Plant on Watts Bar Reservoir in Tennessee. Tree swallows were exposed to ash-related constituents at the ash release via their diet of emergent aquatic insects, whose larval forms can accumulate constituents from submerged river sediments.

Evaluating risks to wildlife from coal fly ash incorporating recent advances in metals and metalloids risk assessment.

Current scientific advances in metal and metalloid risk assessment were applied to evaluate risk to aquatic and riparian wildlife species potentially impacted by residual coal fly ash after cleanup of an unprecedented large ash release into an aquatic environment-the first assessment of its kind. Risk was evaluated using multiple lines of evidence (LOE), including 1) tissue-based risk assessment of inorganic concentrations in piscivorous and insectivorous bird eggs and raccoon organs, 2) deterministic and probabilistic diet-based risk estimates for 10 receptors species, 3) raccoon health metrics, and 4) tree swallow nest productivity measures. Innovative approaches included use of tissue-based toxicity reference values (TRVs), adjustment of bioavailability in the dietary uptake models (using sequential metal extractions in sediment), partitioning chemical species into uptake compartments (e.