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(49-15) Assessment of hazard data to inform the derivation of environmental standards for steroid oestrogens. Young, W.1, Whitehouse, P.*,1, Brighty, G.2, 1 WRC-NSF, Marlow, United Kingdom2 Environment Agency, Wallingford, United Kingdom ABSTRACT- In 2000, the Environment Agency launched its strategy on endocrine disrupting substances in the environment. An action identified in this strategy was to develop, where possible, Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) for the oestrogenic steroids (oestrone, 17 Key words: steroid oestrogens, hazard data, endocrine disruption, environmental standard |
-oestradiol and 17
-ethinyloestradiol) and identify high-risk areas (associated with sewage treatment work effluent discharges), thereby allowing targeted monitoring and risk assessment to be conducted. This paper presents a review of the properties, uses, sources, fate, behaviour and reported environmental concentrations for the steroid oestrogens, and critically assesses the data on their aquatic toxicity and bioaccumulation potential. One of the key issues in deriving standards was availability of reliable data for steroid oestrogens, particularly for ecologically relevant endpoints. Since the mid-1990s, there has been much research into the effects of steroids on wildlife, leading to the generation of substantial ecotoxicological datasets, including full life cycle and multigeneration experiments, to the extent that plausible predictions of effects in the field can be made. A critical aspect of the standard derivation process was reconciling summary statistics for a variety of endpoints including biomarker and physiological effects, and effects on functional endpoints such as survival, sex ratios and reproductive success. Consideration was also given to the known additive effects between steroids, high level of biological activity at very low (ngl-1) concentrations, difficulties in chemical analysis in river water and effluent matrices (for monitoring and compliance assessment), and marked differences in potencies between natural and synthetic forms. Using this information proposed standards for the protection of aquatic life have been derived.