PARENT SESSION10. Soil Toxicity Evaluation: Current Practice and Applications.
Saturday, 16 November 2002
8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Room 150 F
The toxicity of soils and the bioavailability of chemicals in soils are increasingly being considered under the auspices of various legislative and regulatory mandates, especially within the context of ecological risk assessment or natural resource damage assessment. Many of these assessment tools are biological in character, although the physicochemical characterization of soils being considered in the evaluation process should be completed in parallel with the biological assessment to account for non-chemical stressors that may be associated with adverse biological effects. Within the context of soil toxicity assessment, evaluations may be completed using soils (1) from potentially contaminated sites, (2) from reference sites, (3) from spiked-addition studies using artificial, reference or site soils, and (4) site-soil amended with artificial or reference soils. Data derived from these tests are intended to characterize lethal or sublethal effects or bioaccumulation in various test species and provide measures of exposure and effects for ecological risk assessment and the development of generic soil screening levels such as the U.S. EPA's ecological soil screening levels (EcoSSLs). Through the combined efforts of instructors who have been active in the development of tools for the evaluation of chemicals released to soils, the short course will consider (1) soils and their physical and chemical properties that influence their biological activity, and (2) the evaluation of soils within the context of exposure and effects assessments common to ecological risk assessment (e.g. U.S. EPA, ASTM, Eco-RBCA, EcoSSLs) and injury assessments (e.g. NRDA). The assessment tools will focus primarily on biological and chemical methods that have been developed, or are currently being developed, for field and laboratory use, including techniques that have been standardized or that are available from a long history of use in soil science. In conjunction with these summaries of biological and chemical tools, the instructors will also highlight the physicochemical properties that must be evaluated as part of the assessment process. To help short course attendees acquire a working knowledge of these assessment tools, the instructors will illustrate their application through case studies where biological assessments have proven critical to the overall evaluation of exposure and adverse effects associated with these exposures.
Level of difficulty: Introductory to Moderate
Registration limit: 50
Instructors:
Roman Lanno, Ohio State University
Steve Siciliano, University of Ghent
Roman Kuperman, GEO-CENTERS Inc.
Gladys Stephenson, ESG International Inc.
Charlie Menzie, Menzie-Cura & Associates