Fraunhofer IME, P.O. Box 1260, 57377 Schmallenberg, Germany.
Integr Environ Assess Manag. 2010 Jul;6(3):325-37. doi: 10.1002/ieam.69.
Several European directives and regulations address the environmental risk assessment of chemicals. We used the protection of freshwater ecosystems against plant protection products, biocidal products, human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals and priority substances under the Water Framework Directive as examples to explore the potential of ecological effect models for a refined risk assessment. Our analysis of the directives, regulations, and related guidance documents lead us to distinguish the following 5 areas for the application of ecological models in chemical risk assessment: 1) Extrapolation of organism-level effects to the population level: The protection goals are formulated in general terms, e.g., avoiding "unacceptable effects" or "adverse impact" on the environment or the "viability of exposed species." In contrast, most of the standard ecotoxicological tests provide data only on organism-level endpoints and are thus not directly linked to the protection goals which focus on populations and communities. 2) Extrapolation of effects between different exposure profiles: Especially for plant protection products, exposure profiles can be very variable and impossible to cover in toxicological tests. 3) Extrapolation of recovery processes: As a consequence of the often short-term exposures to plant protection products, the risk assessment is based on the community recovery principle. On the other hand, assessments under the other directives assume a more or less constant exposure and are based on the ecosystem threshold principle. 4) Analysis and prediction of indirect effects: Because effects on 1 or a few taxa might have consequences on other taxa that are not directly affected by the chemical, such indirect effects on communities have to be considered. 5) Prediction of bioaccumulation within food chains: All directives take the possibility of bioaccumulation, and thus secondary poisoning within the food chain, into account.
几个欧洲指令和法规涉及到化学品的环境风险评估。我们以保护淡水生态系统免受植物保护产品、生物杀灭产品、人类和兽医药品以及其他化学品和优先物质的指令为例，探讨生态效应模型在精细化风险评估中的应用潜力。我们对指令、法规和相关指导文件的分析，使我们能够区分以下 5 个领域，在化学风险评估中应用生态模型：1）将个体水平的效应外推到种群水平：保护目标通常以一般术语表述，例如，避免对环境或“暴露物种的生存能力”产生“不可接受的影响”或“不利影响”。相比之下，大多数标准毒理学测试仅提供个体水平终点的数据，因此与关注种群和群落的保护目标没有直接联系。2）不同暴露模式之间的效应外推：特别是对于植物保护产品，暴露模式可能非常多样化，无法在毒理学测试中涵盖。3）恢复过程的外推：由于植物保护产品的暴露通常是短期的，因此风险评估基于群落恢复原则。另一方面，其他指令下的评估假设存在或多或少持续的暴露，并基于生态系统阈值原则。4）间接效应的分析和预测：由于对 1 个或少数几个类群的影响可能对其他未直接受到化学物质影响的类群产生后果，因此必须考虑到这种对群落的间接影响。5）食物链中生物累积的预测：所有指令都考虑到生物累积的可能性，以及食物链中二次中毒的可能性。
