Identification, assessment and prioritization of ecotoxicological risks on the scale of a territory: Application to WWTP discharges in a geographical area located in northeast Lyon, France

Abstract

The ecotoxicological risk assessment methodologies developed up to now mainly focus on local pollution and do not incorporate an evaluation and prioritization of the different risk situations present in the same territory. This article presents the different phases of formulating an innovative methodology developed to fill this gap, and its application to all the 18 WasteWater Treatment Plants (WWTP) of a geographical area located northeast of Lyon, France. The aim was also take into account emerging pollutants that are very often “forgotten” in ecotoxicological risk assessments. The results of the study show the extreme diversity of the ecotoxicity of the pollutants present in discharges, with “minimum” PNEC values in the region of a millionth of a microgram (10−6 μg/l) and “maximum” PNEC values in the region of several tens of micrograms. They also show very considerable diversity of the flows of the receiving watercourses in the territory concerned (from several m3/s to 600 m3/s). The Risk Quotients (RQ) resulting from these 2 datasets, calculated for each WWTP and for each of the 10 pollutants most implicated in ecotoxicological risks (Diclofenac, Amoxicillin, Trimethoprim, Roxithromycin, 17β-estradiol, 17α-Ethynylestradiol, Estrone, Nonylphenol, Octylphenol, Nickel, et NH4+), vary from 0.000002 to 187.7 when using the median concentration values of these pollutants, and from 0.000007 to 3750 when using their maximum concentration values. Globally, they show that: (1) the risks are higher for small streams that receive WWTP discharges of average size, (2) the risks are low to very low for discharges into watercourses with high flow rates.