SPECIES SENSITIVITY DISTRIBUTIONS FOR USE IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS FOR 12,386 CHEMICALS.

The present paper considers the collection and use of ecotoxicity data for risk assessment with Species Sensitivity Distributions (SSDs) of chemical pollution in surface water. SSDs are used to quantify the likelihood that critical effect levels are exceeded. This fits to the European Water Framework Directive, which suggest using models to assess the likelihood that chemicals affect water quality for management prioritization. We derived SSDs based on chronic and acute ecotoxicity test data for 12,386 compounds. The log-normal SSDs are characterized by the median and the standard deviation of log-transformed ecotoxicity data and by a quality score. A case study illustrates the utility of SSDs for water quality assessment and management prioritization. We quantified the chronic and acute mixture toxic pressure of mixture exposures for >22,000 water bodies in Europe for 1,760 chemicals for which we had both exposure and hazard data. Results show the likelihood of mixture exposures exceeding a negligible effect level and increasing species loss, respectively. The SSDs presented in this paper represent a versatile and comprehensive approach to prevent, assess and manage chemical pollution problems. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.