Eco-toxicity

The salts of the heavy metals beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc are all of high eco-toxicity. For example, the toxicity of some heavy metals to rainbow trout is demonstrated in Table 16.13 coarse fish are somewhat more resistant. 

Comparing apples and pears - LCA methods generate a list of impacts in a number of different categories. How are these categories to be compared Which is worse, a certain amount of release of a greenhouse gas, or a slight increase in risk to watercourses from a mildly eco-toxic material ... 

Design the product so that only benign materials are left at the end of life - biodegradable and compostable materials with low eco-toxicity. 

Actively try to include materials that are known to be environmentally benign. Estimate the risk of any proposed new material using computer-based models for eco-toxicity and human toxicity. 

Design products to only release benign materials into the environment. This is not easy. For example, both brake pad dust and material from car tires is highly eco-toxic. Design the product for containment or destruction before end of life of any hazardous materials. 

Impact categories (model outputs) eco-toxicity impacts and/or human toxicity impact... 

An average of the impact potentials for the four impact categories on chronic (eco)toxicity, i.e. chronic human toxicity via water, chronic human toxicity via soil, chronic ecotoxicity in water and chronic ecotoxicity in soil, is defined as the common impact category persistent toxicity [16] and used when calculating normalised and weighted results. 

Table 6 Aquatic eco toxicity, contribution of substance emissions to the normalized score for 1 m2 cushion vinyl floor covering (contributions <1% suppressed)...

A. V. Epifantsev - Long-term Effects of Dioxin-containing Eco-toxicants Dioxin Disease. In the book Second Congress of Russian Toxicologists. - 2003.- Moscow, p. 99-101. 

It is accepted that many widely used latex vulcanisation accelerators - dithiocaibamates, thiurams and thiazoles - are capable of producing Type IV allergic response in certain individuals within the population and may also possess increasingly unacceptable eco-toxic and acute toxicity profiles. Thiurams and dithiocaibamates (derived from secondary amines) can also produce potentially harmful N-nitrosamines. Four safer accelerators developed and commercialised by Robinson Brothers are described. They are designed to reduce or eliminate the impact of the above problems using sustainable technology. At the same time these accelerators produce equivalent technological performances to those conventionally used. 10 refs. 

In view of this situation, the ecosystem researcher Holling refers to inherent unknow-ability , cf Holling 1994. The question as to whether, and to what degree, the relative lack of knowledge about possible toxic and especially eco-toxic potential effects of... 

What methods can be used to determine potential customers wishes in a more or less certain way and how can product quality be translated into customers wishes as part of a secure apphcation regarding (eco)toxic risks The fundamental motive of safety alone does not appear adequate to create the requisite demand for more environmental and healthy products. 

The inclusion of a sustainability perspective by all interest parties means that many previous views have had to be revised. An (eco)toxic zero risk or minimal risk is not always appropriate against the background of limited resources, the desire for innovation and when an action needs to be plaimed. The formulation of implementable and measurable objectives for action is a more realisable target. 

The eco-toxicity of composted Ecoflex was investigated in an earthworm acute toxicity test following the OECD guideline 207 (reference). In this test, earthworms... 

Provide guidance on how to develop the most relevant hazard effects (PNEC) data i.e. the eco-toxicity testing strategy and methods definition per environmental compartment exposed. 

To date, however, only a few LCA studies have been reported for nanoproducts, and only some of them have applied actual data for the nanotechnological production methods [29-36]. Furthermore, although aspects relating to (eco)toxicity are usually assessed in LCA, the specific potential risks of ENMs have not been included in the studies so far owing to a lack of knowledge in relation to risk assessment [15, 33]. 

Gabrielson, J., Kuhn, I., Colque-Navarro, P., Hart, M., Iversen, A., McKenzie, D. and Mollby, R. (2003) Microplate-based microbial assay for risk assessment and (eco)toxic fingerprinting of chemicals,... 

Table 2 (continued). Application of bioassays to assess eco toxicity of (solid) waste leachates test batteries are listed in chronological order. 

Risk potential of the technical application of the ionic liquid (leakages, toxic and eco-toxic effects, fate of the compounds in the environment)... 

A crucial difference between the total and added risk is in treatment of the eco-toxicity data. The added risk methodology requires the production of a PNECadd, which is calculated by subtracting the background concentration of metal in the control from the effect/no-effect concentration from that test. These data are then used for the derivation of the PNECadd. The ambient background concentration at the site is then added to the PNECadd to produce the standards to which the measured concentration is then compared. 

If a quality standard is derived by applying an AF of 10 or 100 on the lowest eco-toxicity value, additional ecotoxicity data could be collected sufficient to develop an SSD (OECD 1992) on which no, or a lower, AF is applied. The main underlying assumptions of the SSD approach are as follows ... 

Analysis of the relationship between modeled or measured exposure concentrations and observed (eco)toxic effects... 

To complete a registration, applicants must submit a voluminous dossier with technical data, ranging from the name of the substance to its physico-chemical properties and a base set of toxicity and eco-toxicity test results. While notifiers of new substances under the Sixth Amendment to Directive 67/548/EEC submitted this dossier to NRAs, new and existing substance producers and importers alike are now expected to report directly to ECHA. This shift deprives Member States of an early opportunity to communicate with the registrant and, where indicated, stage an early formal or informal intervention.22... 

Reduce to as low as technically possible the release of other (eco-)toxic chemicals (including naturally occurring substances) which do not fall into the above categories, as well as chemicals whose metabolites exhibit these properties. 

Table 13-2. Zebrafish and medaka, two popular teleost models in developmental biology, genetics, drug research, and (eco)toxicity...

Little information is available concerning the eco-toxicity of this class of chemicals. 

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