Modeling Regulatory Threshold Levels for Pesticides in Surface Waters from Effect Databases

Lara Petschick,Jakob Wolfram,Sascha Bub,Ralf Schulz,Sebastian Stehle

doi:10.3390/data4040150

Lara Petschick, Jakob Wolfram + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/data4040150

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Journal: Data	Publication Date: Dec 14, 2019
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Koblenz and Landau

Abstract

Regulatory threshold levels (RTL) represent robust benchmarks for assessing risks of pesticides, e.g., in surface waters. However, comprehensive scientific risk evaluations comparing RTL to measured environmental concentrations (MEC) of pesticides in surface waters were yet restricted to a low number of pesticides, as RTL are only available after extensive review of regulatory documents. Thus, the aim of the present study was to model RTL equivalents (RTLe) for aquatic organisms from publicly accessible ecotoxicological effect databases. We developed a model that applies validity criteria in accordance with official US EPA review guidelines and validated the model against a set of manually retrieved RTL (n = 49). Model application yielded 1283 RTLe (n = 676 for pesticides, plus 607 additional RTLe for other use types). In a case study, the usability of RTLe was demonstrated for a set of 27 insecticides by comparing RTLe and RTL exceedance rates for 3001 MEC from US surface waters. The provided dataset enables thorough risk assessments of surface water exposure data for a comprehensive number of substances. Especially regions without established pesticide regulations may benefit from this dataset by using it as a baseline information for pesticide risk assessment and for the identification of priority substances or potential high-risk regions.

Highlights

Regulatory threshold levels (RTL) represent robust benchmarks for assessing risks of pesticides, e.g., in surface waters
For risk characterization, estimated environmental concentrations are compared to toxicity endpoints from peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed laboratory effect studies
We developed a similar approach focusing on pesticide risk assessment by translating official validity criteria from standardized test protocols [10,11,12,13,33] and the US EPA guideline for the review of open literature studies [14] into an SQL code

Summary

Introduction

Regulatory threshold levels (RTL) represent robust benchmarks for assessing risks of pesticides, e.g., in surface waters. Comprehensive scientific risk evaluations comparing RTL to measured environmental concentrations (MEC) of pesticides in surface waters were yet restricted to a low number of pesticides, as RTL are only available after extensive review of regulatory documents. The usability of RTLe was demonstrated for a set of 27 insecticides by comparing RTLe and RTL exceedance rates for 3001 MEC from US surface waters. The provided dataset enables thorough risk assessments of surface water exposure data for a comprehensive number of substances. Regions without established pesticide regulations may benefit from this dataset by using it as a baseline information for pesticide risk assessment and for the identification of priority substances or potential high-risk regions

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Conclusion