Breivik Knut, Arnot Jon A, Brown Trevor N, McLachlan Michael S, Wania Frank
Norwegian Institute for Air Research, P.O. Box 100, NO-2027 Kjeller, Norway.
J Environ Monit. 2012 Aug;14(8):2028-37. doi: 10.1039/c2em30259d. Epub 2012 Jul 11.
Quantitative knowledge of organic chemical release into the environment is essential to understand and predict human exposure as well as to develop rational control strategies for any substances of concern. While significant efforts have been invested to characterize and screen organic chemicals for hazardous properties, relatively less effort has been directed toward estimating emissions and hence also risks. Here, a rapid throughput method to estimate emissions of discrete organic chemicals in commerce has been developed, applied and evaluated to support screening studies aimed at ranking and identifying chemicals of potential concern. The method builds upon information in the European Union Technical Guidance Document and utilizes information on quantities in commerce (production and/or import rates), chemical function (use patterns) and physical-chemical properties to estimate emissions to air, soil and water within the OECD for five stages of the chemical life-cycle. The method is applied to 16,029 discrete substances (identified by CAS numbers) from five national and international high production volume lists. As access to consistent input data remains fragmented or even impossible, particular attention is given to estimating, evaluating and discussing uncertainties in the resulting emission scenarios. The uncertainty for individual substances typically spans 3 to 4 orders of magnitude for this initial tier screening method. Information on uncertainties in emissions is useful as any screening or categorization methods which solely rely on threshold values are at risk of leading to a significant number of either false positives or false negatives. A limited evaluation of the screening method's estimates for a sub-set of about 100 substances, compared against independent and more detailed emission scenarios presented in various European Risk Assessment Reports, highlights that up-to-date and accurate information on quantities in commerce as well as a detailed breakdown on chemical function are critically needed for developing more realistic emission scenarios.
了解有机化学品向环境中的释放量对于理解和预测人类接触情况以及制定针对任何相关物质的合理控制策略至关重要。尽管已投入大量精力来表征和筛选具有危险特性的有机化学品，但在估算排放量以及由此产生的风险方面投入的精力相对较少。在此，已开发、应用并评估了一种快速通量方法，用于估算商业中离散有机化学品的排放量，以支持旨在对潜在关注化学品进行排名和识别的筛选研究。该方法基于欧盟技术指导文件中的信息，并利用商业数量（生产和/或进口率）、化学功能（使用模式）和物理化学性质等信息，来估算经合组织范围内化学生命周期五个阶段向空气、土壤和水的排放量。该方法应用于来自五个国家和国际高产量清单的16,029种离散物质（由化学物质登记号标识）。由于获取一致的输入数据仍然分散甚至无法实现，因此特别关注估算、评估和讨论所得排放情景中的不确定性。对于这种初始层级筛选方法，单个物质的不确定性通常跨越3到4个数量级。排放不确定性信息很有用，因为任何仅依赖阈值的筛选或分类方法都有导致大量假阳性或假阴性的风险。与各种欧洲风险评估报告中呈现的独立且更详细的排放情景相比，对约100种物质的子集进行的筛选方法估算的有限评估突出表明，对于制定更现实的排放情景，急需最新且准确的商业数量信息以及化学功能的详细分类。
