Toxicological effects assessment for wildlife in the 21st century: Review of current methods and recommendations for a path forward

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Despite advances in toxicity testing and the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) for hazard assessment, the ecological risk assessment (ERA) framework for terrestrial wildlife (i.e., air‐breathing amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) has remained unchanged for decades. While survival, growth, and reproductive endpoints derived from whole‐animal toxicity tests are central to hazard assessment, nonstandard measures of biological effects at multiple levels of biological organization (e.g., molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organism, population, community, ecosystem) have the potential to enhance the relevance of prospective and retrospective wildlife ERAs. Other factors (e.g., indirect effects of contaminants on food supplies and infectious disease processes) are influenced by toxicants at individual, population, and community levels, and need to be factored into chemically based risk assessments to enhance the “eco” component of ERAs. Regulatory and logistical challenges often relegate such nonstandard endpoints and indirect effects to postregistration evaluations of pesticides and industrial chemicals and contaminated site evaluations. While NAMs are being developed, to date, their applications in ERAs focused on wildlife have been limited. No single magic tool or model will address all uncertainties in hazard assessment. Modernizing wildlife ERAs will likely entail combinations of laboratory‐ and field‐derived data at multiple levels of biological organization, knowledge collection solutions (e.g., systematic review, adverse outcome pathway frameworks), and inferential methods that facilitate integrations and risk estimations focused on species, populations, interspecific extrapolations, and ecosystem services modeling, with less dependence on whole‐animal data and simple hazard ratios. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;00:1–24. © 2023 His Majesty the King in Right of Canada and The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.

Section: Physiologic To Whole-animal Endpointsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Interspecific Extrapolationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wildlife ecological risk assessment in the 21st century: Promising technologies to assess toxicological effects

Rattner

Bean

Beasley

et al. 2023

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“…To address this impasse, the idea of organizing a workshop was conceived, which then led to work groups whose members coalesced in online meetings over time. That process resulted in a series of five reviews, each of which addressed a specific component of the risk-assessment process: problem formulation (Sample et al, 2022), effect assessment (Bean et al, 2023;Rattner et al, 2023), exposure assessment (Morrissey et al, 2023), and risk characterization (Johnson et al, 2024). The purpose of the present overview, the sixth article, is to provide the context for the various group recommendations for improving wildlife risk assessment across various regulatory regimes, by describing the perceived problems with current wildlife ecological risk assessment (WERA) practices and summarizing prospective advances.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating emerging science to improve estimates of risk to wildlife from chemical exposure: What are the challenges?

van den Brink,

Elliott,

Power

et al. 2024

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Many jurisdictions require ecological risk assessments for terrestrial wildlife (i.e., terrestrial vertebrates) to assess potential adverse effects from exposure to anthropogenic chemicals. This occurs, for example, at contaminated sites and when new pesticides are proposed, and it occurs for chemicals that are in production and/or proposed for wide‐scale use. However, guidance to evaluate such risks has not changed markedly in decades, despite the availability of new scientific tools to do so. In 2019, the Wildlife Toxicology World Interest Group of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) initiated a virtual workshop that included a special session coincident with the annual SETAC North America meeting and which focused on the prospect of improving risk assessments for wildlife and improving their use in implementing chemical regulations. Work groups continued the work and investigated the utility of integrating emerging science and novel methods for improving problem formulation (WG1), exposure (WG2), toxicology (WG3), and risk characterization (WG4). Here we provide a summary of that workshop and the follow‐up work, the regulations that drive risk assessment, and the key focus areas identified to advance the ability to predict risks of chemicals to wildlife. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2024;00:1–13. © 2024 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

“…In PF, it is sufficient to be aware that valuable data can be assembled using these emerging methods and approaches. Additional discussion of some of these methods appears in companion papers (e.g., Bean et al, 2023;Rattner et al, 2023;Morrissey et al, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key challenges and developments in wildlife ecological risk assessment: Problem formulation

Sample¹,

Johnson

Hull³

et al. 2022

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Problem formulation (PF) is a critical initial step in planning risk assessments for chemical exposures to wildlife, used either explicitly or implicitly in various jurisdictions to include registration of new pesticides, evaluation of new and existing chemicals released to the environment, and characterization of impact when chemical releases have occurred. Despite improvements in our understanding of the environment, ecology, and biological sciences, few risk assessments have used this information to enhance their value and predictive capabilities. In addition to advances in organism‐level mechanisms and methods, there have been substantive developments that focus on population‐ and systems‐level processes. Although most of the advances have been recognized as being state‐of‐the‐science for two decades or more, there is scant evidence that they have been incorporated into wildlife risk assessment or risk assessment in general. In this article, we identify opportunities to consider elevating the relevance of wildlife risk assessments by focusing on elements of the PF stage of risk assessment, especially in the construction of conceptual models and selection of assessment endpoints that target population‐ and system‐level endpoints. Doing so will remain consistent with four established steps of existing guidance: (1) establish clear protection goals early in the process; (2) consider how data collection using new methods will affect decisions, given all possibilities, and develop a decision plan a priori; (3) engage all relevant stakeholders in creating a robust, holistic conceptual model that incorporates plausible stressors that could affect the targets defined in the protection goals; and (4) embrace the need for iteration throughout the PF steps (recognizing that multiple passes may be required before agreeing on a feasible plan for the rest of the risk assessment). Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;00:1–16. © 2022 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.