TY - JOUR
T1 - Refinement of biodegradation tests methodologies and the proposed utility of new microbial ecology techniques
AU - Kowalczyk, Agnieszka
AU - Martin, Timothy James
AU - Price, Oliver Richard
AU - Snape, Jason Richard
AU - van Egmond, Roger Albert
AU - Finnegan, Christopher James
AU - Schäfer, Hendrik
AU - Davenport, Russell James
AU - Bending, Gary Douglas
N1 - Funding Information:
The present work was funded by Unilever , Cefic LRi , Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council , AstraZeneca and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2015/1/1
Y1 - 2015/1/1
N2 - Society's reliance upon chemicals over the last few decades has led to their increased production, application and release into the environment. Determination of chemical persistence is crucial for risk assessment and management of chemicals. Current established OECD biodegradation guidelines enable testing of chemicals under laboratory conditions but with an incomplete consideration of factors that can impact on chemical persistence in the environment. The suite of OECD biodegradation tests do not characterise microbial inoculum and often provide little insight into pathways of degradation. The present review considers limitations with the current OECD biodegradation tests and highlights novel scientific approaches to chemical fate studies. We demonstrate how the incorporation of molecular microbial ecology methods (i.e., 'omics') may improve the underlying mechanistic understanding of biodegradation processes, and enable better extrapolation of data from laboratory based test systems to the relevant environment, which would potentially improve chemical risk assessment and decision making. We outline future challenges for relevant stakeholders to modernise OECD biodegradation tests and put the 'bio' back into biodegradation.
AB - Society's reliance upon chemicals over the last few decades has led to their increased production, application and release into the environment. Determination of chemical persistence is crucial for risk assessment and management of chemicals. Current established OECD biodegradation guidelines enable testing of chemicals under laboratory conditions but with an incomplete consideration of factors that can impact on chemical persistence in the environment. The suite of OECD biodegradation tests do not characterise microbial inoculum and often provide little insight into pathways of degradation. The present review considers limitations with the current OECD biodegradation tests and highlights novel scientific approaches to chemical fate studies. We demonstrate how the incorporation of molecular microbial ecology methods (i.e., 'omics') may improve the underlying mechanistic understanding of biodegradation processes, and enable better extrapolation of data from laboratory based test systems to the relevant environment, which would potentially improve chemical risk assessment and decision making. We outline future challenges for relevant stakeholders to modernise OECD biodegradation tests and put the 'bio' back into biodegradation.
KW - Biodegradation
KW - Chemical risk assessment
KW - Microbial ecology
KW - OECD tests
KW - Omics
KW - Persistence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908542297&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2014.09.021
DO - 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2014.09.021
M3 - Review article
C2 - 25450910
AN - SCOPUS:84908542297
SN - 0147-6513
VL - 111
SP - 9
EP - 22
JO - Ecotoxicology and environmental safety
JF - Ecotoxicology and environmental safety
ER -