Learning from the past and considering the future of chemicals in the environment

Abstract

Knowledge of the hazards and associated risks from chemicals discharged to the environment has grown considerably over the past 40 years. This improving awareness stems from advances in our ability to measure chemicals at low environmental concentrations, recognition of a range of effects on organisms, and a worldwide growth in expertise. Environmental scientists and companies have learned from the experiences of the past; in theory, the next generation of chemicals will cause less acute toxicity and be less environmentally persistent and bioaccumulative. However, researchers still struggle to establish whether the nonlethal effects associated with some modern chemicals and substances will have serious consequences for wildlife. Obtaining the resources to address issues associated with chemicals in the environment remains a challenge.

Species Sensitivity to Toxic Substances: Evolution, Ecology and Applications

“…Routes may be through direct application and run-off of agrochemicals (Kohler and Triebskorn, 2013;Elias et al, 2018), intended or accidental industrial releases (Batty and Hallberg, 2010), or via waste and wastewater infrastructure, such as for down the drain products passing through wastewater treatment (Munoz et al, 2008;Gardner et al, 2012), or in leachates from landfills (Masoner et al, 2014;Kummerer et al, 2019). As well as their recognized health effects (Landrigan et al, 2018), pollutant chemicals can also affect wildlife species and ecological communities (Hayes et al, 2018;Johnson et al, 2020), placing real costs on ecosystem functions and services (Wang et al, 2019). For example, Pretty et al (2000) identified external costs of £120 M and £16 M for pesticide and fertilizer applications to the United Kingdom drinking water supply chain.…”

How Do Indirect Effects of Contaminants Inform Ecotoxicology? A Review

“…However, ecologists, ecotoxicologists, and risk analysts must continue to foster research on several fronts to further integrate indirect effects into the fabric of ecotoxicology and strengthen our understanding of contaminant effects on populations, communities, and ecosystems. Most research in ecotoxicology has been at the individual-effects level [117], and methods to improve toxicity models continue to be developed. For example, models based on species-level traits and bioenergetics have the potential to improve predictions of species-level responses to various chemicals [114,118], and databases associated with toxic effects that include traditional toxicological information and the results of toxicogenomic or other molecular methods that identify the mode of toxic action are being developed, in some instances with computational modeling [119,120].…”

Functionalized Electrospun Nanofibers as a Versatile Platform for Colorimetric Detection of Heavy Metal Ions in Water: A Review

“…Although chemicals have improved the quality of human life, their continuous development and corresponding environmental pollution leads to detrimental effects through a variety of exposure pathways. Still, the determination of their persistence, transformation, and accumulation behavior in different environmental compartments remains a challenge for defining their complete associated risks, since not all the chemicals are equivocal nor similar in exposure [2,3]. Moreover, the aquatic environment encompassed a variety of molecules that drive continuous interaction with chemical pollutants and the mixtures are expected to cause severe effects greater than their own individual threshold limits resulting from the "concentration addition and independent action" phenomenon of the chemicals with similar and different modes of action, respectively [4,5].…”