Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Aquatic Ecology, Gent, Belgium.
Integr Environ Assess Manag. 2013 Jul;9(3):e34-8. doi: 10.1002/ieam.1428. Epub 2013 Jun 19.
One of the objectives of the European Union (EU) ecological risk assessment of chemicals (ERA) is to derive maximum environmental concentrations that are not expected to cause adverse ecological effects. To this end, related EU directives list protection goals as well as guidelines that should be used to reach these goals. It is generally accepted that the individual-level endpoints on which these guidelines are based do not correspond to the listed population- and ecosystem-level protection goals. In this article, we identify 5 research topics that are key to bridging this gap: 1) the refinement of population-level effects and recovery rates by explicitly taking into account competition and 2) predation, 3) the assessment of chemical effects on biodiversity, 4) the assessment of chemical stress on ecosystem functions and services, and 5) the quantification of the effects of chemical mixtures. In addition, we illustrate why an ecosystem perspective is needed to address these topics and to inform the risk assessment process. We propose the use of existing ecotoxicological community, food web, and ecosystem models to tackle these issues and discuss why new models are needed to predict chemical effects on biodiversity.
欧盟对化学物质进行生态风险评估的目标之一是推导出不会对生态产生不良影响的最大环境浓度。为此，相关的欧盟指令列出了保护目标以及应使用的准则来实现这些目标。人们普遍认为，这些准则所依据的个体水平终点与列出的种群和生态系统水平保护目标不对应。在本文中，我们确定了 5 个研究课题，这些课题是弥合这一差距的关键：1）通过明确考虑竞争和 2）捕食作用，细化种群水平的效应和恢复率，3）评估化学物质对生物多样性的影响，4）评估化学物质对生态系统功能和服务的压力，以及 5）量化化学混合物的影响。此外，我们说明了为什么需要生态系统视角来解决这些问题，并为风险评估过程提供信息。我们建议使用现有的生态毒理学群落、食物网和生态系统模型来解决这些问题，并讨论为什么需要新的模型来预测化学物质对生物多样性的影响。
