Department of Effect-Directed Analysis, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, 04318 Leipzig, Germany;Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Koblenz-Landau, 76829 Landau, Germany;
Department of Effect-Directed Analysis, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, 04318 Leipzig, Germany;Amalex Environmental Solutions, 04103 Leipzig, Germany;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jul 1;111(26):9549-54. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321082111. Epub 2014 Jun 16.
Organic chemicals can contribute to local and regional losses of freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, their overall relevance regarding larger spatial scales remains unknown. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first risk assessment of organic chemicals on the continental scale comprising 4,000 European monitoring sites. Organic chemicals were likely to exert acute lethal and chronic long-term effects on sensitive fish, invertebrate, or algae species in 14% and 42% of the sites, respectively. Of the 223 chemicals monitored, pesticides, tributyltin, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and brominated flame retardants were the major contributors to the chemical risk. Their presence was related to agricultural and urban areas in the upstream catchment. The risk of potential acute lethal and chronic long-term effects increased with the number of ecotoxicologically relevant chemicals analyzed at each site. As most monitoring programs considered in this study only included a subset of these chemicals, our assessment likely underestimates the actual risk. Increasing chemical risk was associated with deterioration in the quality status of fish and invertebrate communities. Our results clearly indicate that chemical pollution is a large-scale environmental problem and requires far-reaching, holistic mitigation measures to preserve and restore ecosystem health.
有机化学品可能导致淡水生物多样性和生态系统服务的局部和区域丧失。然而，它们在更大空间尺度上的总体相关性仍不清楚。在这里，我们提出了迄今为止关于欧洲 4000 个监测点的大陆尺度上有机化学品的首次风险评估。有机化学品可能会对敏感鱼类、无脊椎动物或藻类物种产生急性致命和慢性长期影响，分别在 14%和 42%的地点。在所监测的 223 种化学物质中，农药、三丁基锡、多环芳烃和溴化阻燃剂是造成化学风险的主要因素。它们的存在与上游集水区的农业和城市地区有关。潜在急性致命和慢性长期影响的风险随着每个地点分析的具有生态毒理学相关性的化学物质数量的增加而增加。由于本研究中考虑的大多数监测计划仅包含这些化学物质的一部分，因此我们的评估可能低估了实际风险。化学风险的增加与鱼类和无脊椎动物群落质量状况的恶化有关。我们的研究结果清楚地表明，化学污染是一个大规模的环境问题，需要采取广泛的整体缓解措施来保护和恢复生态系统健康。
