Abstract
We illustrate that the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development guideline 305 (OECD‐305) for growth‐correcting bioconcentration factors (BCFs) and biomagnification factors (BMFs) violates the mass‐balance assumption underlying the definition of BCFs and BMFs and provides unrealistic estimates of BCFs and BMFs of chemicals in nongrowing fish. We present and test alternative methods for growth‐correcting BCFs and BMFs that maintain mass balance. We conclude that the OECD‐305‐recommended growth correction of BCFs and BMFs causes error, is unnecessary, and should be revisited. Environ Toxicol Chem 2019;38:2065–2072. © 2019 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC.
Highlights
The guidelines developed by the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) for conducting aqueous and dietary bioaccumulation tests include methods for determining growth‐corrected bioconcentration factors (BCFs) and biomagnification factors (BMFs), meant to represent the BCFs and BMFs of chemicals in nongrowing fish
There are good reasons to conduct bioaccumulation assessments for slowly or nongrowing fish, the method for assessing the BCF and BMF in nongrowing fish from bioaccumulation test results with growing fish needs to be revisited because the current method described in the OECD‐305 guideline violates the mass‐balance assumption, on which the bioaccumulation model and the correct determination of the BCF and BMF are based
We explored the relationship between oxygen consumption and the specific growth rate in fish to test the method for growth correction of the BCF
Summary
The guidelines developed by the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) for conducting aqueous and dietary bioaccumulation tests (guideline 305; Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development 2012) include methods for determining growth‐corrected bioconcentration factors (BCFs) and biomagnification factors (BMFs), meant to represent the BCFs and BMFs of chemicals in nongrowing fish. The growth correction involves subtracting the growth rate of the fish measured in the experiment and expressed in terms of the specific growth rate or growth dilution rate constant (kg) from the measured depuration rate constant (kT) of the chemical in the fish. The violation of mass balance in the growth correction occurs when, by subtracting kg from kT, the loss of chemical mass from the fish is reduced whereas the intake of chemical mass is not. This causes the numerator in the BCF and BMF to be represented by a growing fish and the denominator by a nongrowing fish. This is not a realistic description of bioaccumulation in a nongrowing fish and the corresponding BCFs and BMFs do not correctly represent the bioaccumulation of the chemical in nongrowing fish
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