Adapting an Ambient Monitoring Program to the Challenge of Managing - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Adapting an Ambient Monitoring Program to the Challenge of Managing Emerging Pollutants in the San Francisco Estuary Rainer Hoenicke, Daniel Oros, John Oram, and Karen Taberski

Overview • The Management Challenge • Beginning to Meet the Challenge through Monitoring and Assessment • Result Highlights - for details go to: www.sfei.org) • Future Steps

“I dentifying pollutants using our standard approach is like using Peterson’s Guide to North American Birds in the Costa Rican rainforest” Robert Risebrough

Thanks to: • Regional Monitoring Program Participants • RMP Re-design and Exposure and Effects Workgroups

Management Challenge • Potential environmental risks of most pollutant groups have yet to be examined • Current regulatory approaches don’t take interactive, additive, and indirect pollutant/ metabolite effects into consideration • Complex mixtures in environmental samples

A Few Statistics • As of 2005, nearly 9 million organic and inorganic substances are commercially available • 240,000 of those are inventoried • A miniscule percentage is regulated in the US.

W hat is currently m anaged? • 126 “Priority Pollutants” for which standards exist • A select few additional pollutants in non-systematic fashion • The focus is on a pollutant-by- pollutant approach (e.g., TMDLs)

Adaptations to the Regional Monitoring Program • Retrospective, “forensic” analysis of chromatograms • Expansion of special studies • Targeted measurements of selected additional compounds • New method development

Retrospective Analysis Highlights • m ost unknow n peaks w ere identified ( > 9 0 % ) • levels ranged from pg/ L ( ppq) to m g/ L ( ppb) • contam inants did not exceed low est LC5 0 toxicity thresholds for m ost sensitive aquatic species

Retrospective Analysis of W ater and Sedim ent Sam ples Resulted in New Target Com pounds: � PBDEs � Phthalates � P-Nonylphenol � Triphenylphosphate � Nitro and Polycyclic Musks

PBDEs W ater

PBDEs Sedim ent

PBDEs Bivalve Tissue

PBDEs in Fish 1 9 9 7 -2 0 0 2

PBDEs – Least Tern Eggs ( She et al., 2 0 0 4 )

New Targeted Com pounds Major Health Chemical Future Steps Concerns PBDEs Endocrine Continue (water, system disruption monitoring in water, sediment, (targets thyroid), sediment, tissues tissue) bioaccumulation, (bivalves, fish) and carcinogenic, bird eggs persistent in the environment

New Targeted Com pounds, cont. Major Health Chemical Future Steps Concerns p-Nonylphenol Endocrine System Discontinue in water Disruption water and sediment sediment; tissue Concentrations in Estuary below concern. Consider fish tissue analysis in 2006.

Targeted New Com pounds, cont. Major Health Chemical Future Steps Concerns Bioaccumulation, Nitro and Review data toxicity in aquatic Polycyclic and evaluate biota (efflux Musks Polycyclic pump inhibitors), (tissue only) musks. estrogenic in fish

Targeted New Com pounds, cont. Major Health Chemical Future Steps Concerns Triphenylphos-phate Bioaccumulation, Discontinue (tissue only) human toxicity, monitoring unknown toxicity to aquatic biota Phthalates Endocrine Discontinue water system disruption, monitoring – blank sediment bio-accumulation, contamination is tissue toxicity problematic. Monitored in cormorant eggs in 2004; evaluate

Targeted New Com pounds, cont. Major Health Chemical Future Steps Concerns Perfluorinated Bioaccumulation Consider Compounds monitoring in (PFOS) water, sediments, tissues and bird eggs Pharmaceuticals Toxicity Consider monitoring in water Unknown only due to their effects high solubility

Conclusions • The current approach of targeted chemical-by-chemical monitoring cannot anticipate future concerns • Develop more integrative measures and bioassays responsive to multiple stressors • Conduct periodic assessments of compositional change (“fingerprinting”)