PARENT SESSION
PM6 - Fate & Effects of Metals: Regulation and Risk
Monday, 18 November 2002
8:00 AM to 6:30 PM
Exhibit Hall
(P269) On the Aquatic Hazard Classification of Metals and Alloys.
Skeaff, Jim*,1, McGeer, Jim1, King, Morgan1, Nadeau, Jennifer1, 1 CANMET, Mining and Mineral Sciences Laboratories, NRCan, Ottawa, Ont., Canada
ABSTRACT- Within the OECD Harmonised Integrated Classification System (HCS) For Human Health and Environmental Hazards of Chemical Substances and Mixtures (OECD, 2001), a scheme to classify chemical substances has been developed, a section of which has been adapted to enable the classification of metals and metal compounds, with the potential for extension to alloys. The scheme is driven by data from a Draft Transformation/Dissolution (T/D) Protocol which is a simple experimental procedure, under a set of standard laboratory conditions representative of those gener-ally occurring in the environment, applied to various weighed amounts of powders or granules of the solid substances, loaded to 1 L of an aqueous medium such as OECD 203 or OECD 201. This system recognizes the unique nature of metals and inorganic metal compounds and their distinct properties compared to synthetic organic substances. To establish the hazard classification of a metal-bearing substance, data from the Draft T/D Protocol are compared to existing ecotoxicity data as determined under similar conditions. Additionally, toxicity testing may be used to validate the linkage between transformation chemistry and literature values for toxicity. In this poster, we review the HCS and Draft T/D Protocol, and present data on the T/D characteristics of such metals as nickel and zinc, and such alloys as cartridge brass and stainless steel, as well as discuss the implications for the hazard classifications of these substances.
Key words: metals, alloys, hazard identificaiton, bioavailability