ecotoxicology Articles
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Ecotoxicology
The term ecotoxicology was coined by René Truhaut in 1969 who defined it as "the branch of toxicology concerned with the study of toxic effects, caused by natural or synthetic pollutants, to the constituents of ecosystems, animal (including human), vegetable and microbial, in an ...
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Don't be fooled—A no‐observed‐effect concentration is no substitute for a poor concentration–response experiment
Renowned mathematician and science historian Jacob Bronowski once defined science as “the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not” and noted “that needs more courage than we might think.” Such would also seem to be the case with no‐observed‐effect concentrations (NOECs) and no‐observed‐effect levels in ecotoxicology. Compelling arguments were advanced more than a quarter of ...
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The drive to ban the NOEC/LOEC in favor of ECx is misguided and misinformed
Challenges to the use of the NOEC in ecotoxicology have appeared over the years, with a recent call for banning its use in favor of the ECx. This paper presents an opposing view, providing reasons for the continued use of the NOEC, and for hypothesis testing in general. Although the use of ECx values is appropriate in many situations, there are numerous real‐world examples where it is not ...
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Adsorption of Cu2+ on Montmorillonite as Affected by 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid (2,4-D)
Heavy metals have long been recognized as ecotoxicological hazardous substances and their chronic toxicities and accumulation abilities in living organisms have been to great interest for many years. Heavy metals are introduced into the soils through natural phenomena and human activities and waste ...
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Estimating hazardous concentrations by an informative bayesian approach
The species sensitivity distribution (SSD) approach is recommended for assessing chemical risk. In practice, however, it can be used only for the few substances for which large‐scale ecotoxicological results are available. Indeed, the statistical frequentist approaches used for building SSDs and for deriving hazardous concentrations (HC5) inherently require extensive data to guarantee ...
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High throughput concentration‐response analysis for omics datasets
Omics‐based methods are increasingly used in current ecotoxicology. Therefore, a large number of observations for various toxic substances and organisms is available and may be utilized for identifying modes of action, adverse outcome pathways or novel biomarkers. For all these purposes good statistical analysis of toxicogenomic data is vital. In contrast to established ecotoxicological ...
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The Predictive Potential of a Battery of Ecotoxicological Tests for Human Acute Toxicity, as Evaluated with the First 50 MEIC Chemicals
Abstract : The acute toxicities of the first 50 chemicals (dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride excluded) of the multicentre evaluation of in vitrocytotoxicity (MEIC) programme were determined on four aquatic invertebrates and a bacterial strain (Photobacterium phosphoreumfor the MicrotoxTM test) commonly used in ecotoxicology testing. Three of the aquatic invertebrate tests consisted of cyst-based ...
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Biological effects of contaminants on marine organisms: the contribution of biotechnology
One aspect of ecotoxicology concerns the effects of contaminants. Work on this area in the marine field is recent but useful for numerous applications, such as toxicological tests, the evaluation of organism response and the development of networks for the measurement of pollutant effects. In this context, the contribution of biotechnologies and technical advances in modern biology is important. ...
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Time‐dependent species sensitivity distributions
Time is a central component of toxicity assessments. However, current ecotoxicological practice marginalizes time in concentration–response (C‐R) modeling and species sensitivity distribution (SSD) analyses. For C‐R models, time is invariably fixed, and toxicity measures are estimated from a function fitted to the data at that time. The estimated toxicity measures are used as inputs to the SSD ...
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Sublethal effects of the beta‐blocker sotalol at environmentally relevant concentrations on the New Zealand mud‐snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum
Monitoring sublethal effects of pharmaceuticals on non‐target species in aquatic environments has become an important topic in ecotoxicology, yet there are few studies concerning the effects of beta‐blockers on aquatic organisms. We investigated the effects of the beta‐blocker sotalol at three environmentally relevant concentrations on life‐history traits of the New Zealand mud‐snail ...
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Semipolar polycyclic aromatic compounds: Identification of 15 priority substances and the need of regulatory steps under reach regulation
Semipolar polycyclic aromatic compounds (sPAC) are frequently found in association with homocyclic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in UVCBs (substances of unknown or variable composition, complex reaction products or biological materials) from coal or crude oil and products derived thereof. However, there are major information deficiencies with regard to their prevalence, their ...
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Microbiotests in Aquatic Ecotoxicology : Characteristics, Utility and Prospects
Abstract :Small-scale biological tests (microbiotests) have steadily increased in development and application over the last 30 years in the field of aquatic ecotoxicology. Multitrophic level assessment requirements, attractive features of microbiotests, and the constant search for simplicity and cost efficiency of testing are reasons explaining the expanding use of microbiotests. In this article, ...
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An approach to assess the regulatory relevance of micro‐evolutionary effects in ecological risk assessment of chemicals: A case‐study with Cd
We suggest an approach to assess the regulatory relevance of micro‐evolutionary effects of chemicals based on a comparison of concentrations at which micro‐evolutionary effects have been reported in literature and conventionally derived ecotoxicological threshold concentrations. We found reports of micro‐evolutionary effects of cadmium in freshwater organisms at hardness‐normalized ...
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