Testing toxic substances for protection of the environment

Abstract

The Toxic Substances Control Act requires pre-production testing of chemicals for potential hazards to human and environmental health. Effective control of chemicals requires evaluations of chemical hazard that go beyond determinations of toxicity to humans to include the effects, transport, and fate of chemicals in the environment. Formulation of meaningful hazard evaluations depends on integrating information from tests of chemical effects, transport, and fate or by developing testing tools that integrate these factors during experimentation. Chemical effects may be acute or chronic and they may be observed in individual organisms, populations of organisms, or in total ecosystems. Chemical transport through the environment depends on physico-chemical characteristics of the chemical and the medium (soil, water, or air) as well as environmental factors and biotic processes. The ultimate fate of chemicals (persistence, transformation, or degradation) is determined by numerous physical and biological processes occurring in the environment, and must be acknowledged to effectively determine the hazard. Many techniques are available for the separate and routine evaluation of the effects, transport and fate of environmental contaminants. However, separate identification of the importance and magnitude of each of these factors limits their utility in assessments of chemical hazard. The microcosm (model ecosystem) method integrates many of these tests in replicable experimental units, and may provide substantial information on chemical hazard in ecosystem context.