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. 2023 Aug:193:115063.
doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115063. Epub 2023 Jun 9.

Determination of aquatic hazard concentrations for the oil spill response product class of surface washing agents using species sensitivity distributions

Matthew Alloy  1 , Devi Sundaravadivelu  2 , Robyn Conmy  3 , Peter Meyer  4 , Mace G Barron  5
Affiliations

Determination of aquatic hazard concentrations for the oil spill response product class of surface washing agents using species sensitivity distributions

Matthew Alloy et al. Mar Pollut Bull. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Surface washing agents (SWAs) are a diverse class of oil spill response products intended to facilitate removal of stranded oil from shorelines. This class of agents has high application rates relative to other categories of spill response products, but global toxicity data is generally limited to two standard test species: inland silverside and mysid shrimp. Here, we provide a framework to maximize the utility of limited toxicity data across a product class. To characterize species sensitivity to SWAs, the toxicity of three agents spanning a range of chemical and physical properties were tested in eight species. The relative sensitivity of mysids shrimp and inland silversides as surrogate test organisms was determined. Toxicity normalized species sensitivity distributions (SSDn) were used to estimate fifth centile hazard concentration (HC5) values for SWAs with limited toxicity data. Chemical toxicity distributions (CTD) of SWA HC5 values were used to compute a fifth centile chemical hazard distribution (HD5) to provide a more comprehensive assessment of hazard across a spill response product class with limited toxicity data than traditional single species or single agent approaches can give.

Keywords: Chemical toxicity distribution; Hazard concentration; Species sensitivity distribution; Surface washing agent; Toxicity.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Overview of methods used to compute the fifth percentile hazard concentration (HC5) sensitivity ratios, and fifth percentile hazard distribution (HD5) estimation using conventional species sensitivity distribution (SSD), toxicity normalized SSD (SSDn), and chemical toxicity distribution (CTD) approaches with surface washing agents (SWA) as a product class.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) generated using only study test data (left panels: A, Accell Clean SWA; C, Cytosol Biosolvent; E, PES-51) and SSDs generated using study and literature data (right panels: B, Accell Clean SWA; D, Cytosol Biosolvent; F, PES-51). Black dots are toxicity values from the current study. Open circles in panels B, D, and F are the geometric means of toxicity values of the current study, values taken from the literature, and the NCP Product Schedule (EPA, 2022) toxicity values for A. bahia and M. beryllina. Open squares in panels B, D, and F are the individual values or geometric means of toxicity values from the literature. Sources for surface washing agent toxicity values are given in Table S3.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Frequency plot of 62 HC5 values (ppm) of the SWA product class derived from either the A. bahia SSDn (solid line) or M. beryllina SSDn (dashed line). See Table S4 for details.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Frequency histogram of the sensitivity of A. bahia and M. beryllina relative to the HC5 for 62 SWAs (sensitivity ratio = SWA specific toxicity value/SWA specific HC5). Vertical dotted line marks the respective median ratios.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.
Chemical toxicity distribution of the geometric means of HC5 values for 62 SWAs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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