School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, 123 Cheomdangwagi-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju, 61005, Republic of Korea.
Water Quality Research Center, K-water Convergence Institute, 200 Sintanjin-ro, Daedeok-gu, Daejeon, 34350, Republic of Korea.
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2019 Nov 15;183:109483. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2019.109483. Epub 2019 Jul 27.
The environment has been continuously exposed to heavy metals by various routes, from both natural and artificial sources. In particular, heavy metals in water can affect aquatic organisms adversely, even at very low concentrations, and can lead to the disturbance of the ecosystem balance and biodiversity. Ecological risk assessments are conducted to protect the environment from such situations, primarily by deriving the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) from the species sensitivity distribution (SSD). This study developed the SSDs based on the species living in Korean freshwater for four heavy metals including cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). The species compositions of the SSDs were examined, and three types of PNECs were derived by applying different assessment factors (AF). In addition, the occurrence and concentrations of heavy metals in Korean rivers were investigated, and the ecological risk assessment was carried out to compare the SSDs with the environmental concentrations. The SSDs were developed using a sufficient number of species, but the missing data of plants and insects provided an incomplete species composition. The results show that Cd and Pb in the environmental concentrations of rivers would not cause any risk to aquatic organisms from the derived PNEC. However, some organisms might be adversely affected by the concentrations of Zn, and a small amount of risk was expected under the conservative PNEC. The distribution of Cu in the rivers was not considered to be safe for aquatic organisms because the average environmental concentrations potentially affected the proportion of the SSD, and the environmental concentrations exceeded the PNECs. The concentrations of Cu and Zn in industrial waters indicated a considerable risk to aquatic organisms, and the probability of exceeding the PNECs appeared to be quite high. Therefore, this study indicates that additional actions and parallel field studies are required based on the risk posed to aquatic organisms by Cu and Zn in four Korean rivers.
环境通过各种途径持续受到重金属的影响，这些重金属既有自然来源也有人工来源。特别是水中的重金属即使浓度非常低，也会对水生生物产生不利影响，并可能导致生态系统平衡和生物多样性受到干扰。生态风险评估旨在保护环境免受此类情况的影响，主要是通过从物种敏感度分布（SSD）推导出预测无影响浓度（PNEC）来实现。本研究基于韩国淡水环境中的四种重金属（镉、铜、铅和锌），构建了 SSD，评估了物种的敏感性分布。考察了 SSD 的物种组成，并通过应用不同的评估因子（AF）推导出了三种类型的 PNEC。此外，还调查了韩国河流中重金属的存在和浓度，并进行了生态风险评估，将 SSD 与环境浓度进行了比较。SSD 是使用足够数量的物种构建的，但植物和昆虫的缺失数据提供了不完整的物种组成。结果表明，河流环境浓度中的 Cd 和 Pb 不会对水生生物造成任何风险，因为从推导的 PNEC 来看。然而，某些生物体可能会受到 Zn 浓度的不利影响，在保守的 PNEC 下，预计会存在少量风险。河流中 Cu 的分布被认为对水生生物不安全，因为环境浓度有可能影响 SSD 的比例，而且环境浓度超过了 PNEC。工业废水中的 Cu 和 Zn 浓度表明对水生生物存在相当大的风险，超过 PNEC 的概率似乎相当高。因此，本研究表明，需要根据韩国四条河流中 Cu 和 Zn 对水生生物构成的风险，采取额外的行动和并行的实地研究。
