Ecotoxicological Risk Profiles of Chemicals: Concept and Application to Antifouling Biocides

Abstract

In the first part of the dissertation, a novel concept for the comparative risk evaluation of environmental effects of chemicals is presented. Starting with an overview of strenghts and weaknesses of published methods, the use of the five indicators release, spatiotemporal range, bioaccumulation, biological activity and uncertainty is proposed. The five indicators taken together constitute an ecotoxicological risk profile for each of the evaluated substances, which enables manufacturers, users and other interested groups to compare substances with respect to the risk of damaging the environment by their use. The second part of the dissertation shows the application of the concept to the five antifouling biocides tributyltin, Irgarol 1051, Sea-Nine 211 and pyrithione in commercial shipping. Since the high biological activity is a desired property of the substances, and therefore leaves little room for optimization from the environmental viewpoint, the other four indicators gain special importance in this case. The comparative evaluation of the release indicator only resulted in small differences between the substances. A comparison of the estimated copper input from antifouling coatings of the commercial world fleet with todays total copper inputs into the oceans yielded a fraction of 5 % for the contribution of antifouling coatings. For the evaluation of the spatiotemporal range of the substances, a newly developed Level III fate model is presented. The influence of the variability of biocide-specific input parameters on model results, which was investigated by Monte Carlo simulations, is discussed, and the model results are compared with concentrations of tributyltin and copper that have been measured in the environment.Finally, an integration of the ecotoxicological risk profiles into a newly presented concept for a sustainable product design of chemicals is proposed. http://www.dissertation.de/buch.php3?buch=1330