Forecasting the impacts of chemical pollution and climate change interactions on the health of wildlife

Abstract

Abstract Global climate change is impacting organisms, biological communities and ecosystems around the world. While most research has focused on characterizing how the climate is changing, including modeling future climatic conditions and predicting the impacts of these conditions on biodiversity, it is also the case that climate change is altering the environmental impacts of chemical pollution. Future climate conditions are expected to influence both the worldwide distribution of chemicals and the toxicological consequences of chemical exposures to organisms. Many of the environmental changes associated with a warming global climate (e.g., increased average – and possibly extreme – temperatures; intense periods of drier and wetter conditions; reduced ocean pH; altered salinity dynamics in estuaries) have the potential to enhance organism susceptibility to chemical toxicity. Additionally, chemical exposures themselves may impair the ability of organisms to cope with the changing environmental conditions of the shifting climate. Such reciprocity in the interactions between climate change and chemicals illustrates the complexity inherent in predicting the toxicological consequences of chemical exposures under future climate scenarios. Here, we summarize what is currently known about the potential reciprocal effects of climate change and chemical toxicity on wildlife, and depict current approaches and ongoing challenges for incorporating climate effects into chemical testing and assessment. Given the rapid pace of new man-made chemistries, the development of accurate and rapid methods to evaluate multiple chemical and non-chemical stressors in an ecologically relevant context will be critical to understanding toxic and endocrine-disrupting effects of chemical pollutants under future climate scenarios.