This paper summarizes what is known about the endocrine systems of mollusks and how they can be disrupted by exogenous substances. It then examines the various possibilities for using mollusk-based toxicity tests to detect and assess the environmental risks of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). It is concluded that there are no internationally standardized tests with mollusks available at present that are suitable for assessing the risks of long-term exposure to EDCs but that several published methods show potential. At the present state of knowledge, the most promising mollusk species for use in partial life cycle testing is probably the fresh- and brackish-water mesogastropod, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, which is known to be responsive to both direct and indirect androgens and to estrogens (and their mimics). Less experience of full life cycle testing exists with mollusks, but the freshwater pulmonate gastropod Lymnaea stagnalis at present offers the best possibility for a practical procedure. In both cases, there is a need for substantial test optimization and validation before these procedures could form the basis of international guidelines.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is 1 of 4 papers from the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board's Ecological Processes and Effects Committee workshop on the current and future practice of ecological risk assessment. The workshop was held in Washington, DC in February 2006.

Risk assessment originated with the insurance industry and spread to the estimation of risks to people and property in other contexts, including the regulation of environmental contamination. Ecological assessment became an important component of environmental management in the United States with the legal mandate for environmental impact assessment in 1970. Risk assessment and ecological assessment merged in the 1980s to form ecological risk assessment (ERA). Since then, ERA has been institutionalized with the development of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (hereafter, USEPA or Agency) framework and guidance documents. Ecological risk assessment has been adapted by the Agency's program offices to fit their legal and policy contexts. The future of ERA will inevitably include the incorporation of more complex and demanding methods. However, the biggest challenge for future risk assessors will be to make ecological risks more compelling to decision makers.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is 1 of 4 papers from the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board's Ecological Processes and Effects Committee workshop on the current and future practice of ecological risk assessment. The workshop was held in Washington, DC in February 2006.

The framework for ecological risk assessments has provided a way to analyze stressors in the environment. Despite the power of this tool to inform environmental management decisions, the practice has not reached its full potential. In this paper, limitations of the practice are described under 2 categories, namely inherent and contrived. Inherent limitations are constraints of nature that we need to be aware of as we design and interpret studies. Contrived limitations are impediments that have arisen in the practice through precedent or policy. The closing portion of this paper provides a series of short-term and long-term steps that could remove some of the limitations, especially the contrived ones, and improve the usefulness of risk assessments.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is 1 of 4 papers from the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board's Ecological Processes and Effects Committee workshop on the current and future practice of ecological risk assessment. The workshop was held in Washington, DC in February 2006.

Twenty-five years ago, ecological assessments were being performed by different organizations, using different principles and methods, with little or no communication between different groups and no means for reconciling conflicts and inconsistencies between assessment methodologies. The recognition by practitioners of environmental assessment of the need for a unifying conceptual framework stimulated the development of today's Framework and Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA). This paper discusses the success of ERA as a process for linking environmental science to decision making, using 3 recently published case studies involving establishment of baseline ecological risks at a contaminated site, probabilistic assessment of regional risks of pesticide use, and regulation of pharmaceutical product manufacture. Some promising future directions in ERA are briefly discussed, and 3 critical challenges to future success are identified.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is 1 of 4 papers from the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board's Ecological Processes and Effects Committee workshop on the current and future practice of ecological risk assessment. The workshop was held in Washington, DC in February 2006.

The Ecological Processes and Effects Committee of the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board conducted a self-initiated study and convened a public workshop to characterize the state of the ecological risk assessment (ERA), with a view toward advancing the science and application of the process. That survey and analysis of ERA in decision making shows that such assessments have been most effective when clear management goals were included in the problem formulation; translated into information needs; and developed in collaboration with decision makers, assessors, scientists, and stakeholders. This process is best facilitated when risk managers, risk assessors, and stakeholders are engaged in an ongoing dialogue about problem formulation. Identification and acknowledgment of uncertainties that have the potential to profoundly affect the results and outcome of risk assessments also improves assessment effectiveness. Thus we suggest 1) thorough peer review of ERAs be conducted at the problem formulation stage and 2) the predictive power of risk-based decision making be expanded to reduce uncertainties through analytical and methodological approaches like life cycle analysis. Risk assessment and monitoring programs need better integration to reduce uncertainty and to evaluate risk management decision outcomes. Postdecision audit programs should be initiated to evaluate the environmental outcomes of risk-based decisions. In addition, a process should be developed to demonstrate how monitoring data can be used to reduce uncertainties. Ecological risk assessments should include the effects of chemical and nonchemical stressors at multiple levels of biological organization and spatial scale, and the extent and resolution of the pertinent scales and levels of organization should be explicitly considered during problem formulation. An approach to interpreting lines of evidence and weight of evidence is critically needed for complex assessments, and it would be useful to develop case studies and/or standards of practice for interpreting lines of evidence. In addition, tools for cumulative risk assessment should be developed because contaminants are often released into stressed environments.

A new Expert Decision Support System (EDSS) that can integrate Triad data for assessing environmental risk and biological vulnerability at contaminated sites has been developed. Starting with ecosystem relevance, the EDSS assigns different weights to the results obtained from Triad disciplines. The following parameters have been employed: 1) chemical soil analyses (revealing the presence of potentially dangerous substances), 2) ecotoxicological bioassays (utilizing classical endpoints such as survival and reproduction rates), 3) biomarkers (showing sublethal pollutant effects), and 4) ecological parameters (assessing changes in community structure and functions). For each Triad discipline, the EDSS compares the data obtained at the studied field sites with reference values and calculates different 0–1 indexes (e.g., Chemical Risk Index, Ecotoxicological Risk Index, and Ecological Risk Index). The EDSS output consists of 3 indexes: 1) Environmental Risk Index (EnvRI), quantifying the level of biological damage at population–community level, 2) Biological Vulnerability Index (BVI), assessing the potential threats to biological equilibriums, and 3) Genotoxicity Index (GTI), screening genotoxicity effects. The EDSS has been applied in the integration of a battery of Triad data obtained during the European Union-funded Life Intervention in the Fraschetta Area (LINFA) project, which has been carried out in order to estimate the potential risk from soils of a highly anthropized area (Alessandria, Italy) mainly impacted by deposition of atmospheric pollutants. Results obtained during 4 seasonal sampling campaigns (2004–2005) show maximum values of EnvRI in sites A and B (characterized by industrial releases) and lower levels in site D (affected by vehicular traffic emissions). All 3 potentially polluted sites have shown high levels of BVI and GTI, suggesting a general change from reference conditions (site C).

It is not known if current chemical and biological monitoring methods are appropriate for assessing the impacts of growing industrial development on ecologically sensitive northern waters. We used a multitrophic level approach to evaluate current monitoring methods and to determine whether metal-mining activities had affected 2 otherwise pristine rivers that flow into the South Nahanni River, Northwest Territories, a World Heritage Site. We compared upstream reference conditions in the rivers to sites downstream and further downstream of mines. The endpoints we evaluated included concentrations of metals in river water, sediments, and liver and flesh of slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus); benthic algal and macroinvertebrate abundance, richness, diversity, and community composition; and various slimy sculpin measures, our sentinel forage fish species. Elevated concentrations of copper and iron in liver tissue of sculpin from the Flat River were associated with high concentrations of mine-derived iron in river water and copper in sediments that were above national guidelines. In addition, sites downstream of the mine on the Flat River had increased algal abundances and altered benthic macroinvertebrate communities, whereas the sites downstream of the mine on Prairie Creek had increased benthic macroinvertebrate taxa richness and improved sculpin condition. Biological differences in both rivers were consistent with mild enrichment of the rivers downstream of current and historical mining activity. We recommend that monitoring in these northern rivers focus on indicators in epilithon and benthic macroinvertebrate communities due to their responsiveness and as alternatives to lethal fish sampling in habitats with low fish abundance. We also recommend monitoring of metal burdens in periphyton and benthic invertebrates for assessment of exposure to mine effluent and causal association. Although the effects of mining activities on riverine biota currently are limited, our results show that there is potential for effects to occur with proposed growth in mining activities.

Environmental contaminants can have profound effects on birds, acting from the molecular through population levels of biological organization. An analysis of potential contaminant threats was undertaken at 52 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) within the northeastern Atlantic coast drainage. Using geographic information system methodology, data layers describing or integrating contamination (impaired waters, fish or wildlife consumption advisories, toxic release inventory sites, and estimates of pesticide use) were overlaid on buffered IBA boundaries, and the relative threat at each site was ranked. Some species of birds residing at Jefferson National Forest (NF), Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Great Dismal Swamp NWR, Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah National Park (NP), Adirondack Park, Edwin B. Forsythe NWR, George Washington NF, Green Mountain NF, Long Island Piping Plover Beaches, and Merrymeeting Bay may be threatened by environmental contaminants. These sites exhibited moderate to high percentages of impaired waters and had fish consumption advisories related to mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, and were located in counties with substantial pesticide use. Endangered, threatened, and Watch List bird species are present at these sites. The Contaminant Exposure and Effects–Terrestrial Vertebrates database was searched within buffered IBA boundaries, and for a moderate number of sites there was concordance between the perceived risk and contaminant exposure. Several of the IBAs with apparently substantial contaminant threats had no avian ecotoxicological data (e.g., George Washington NF, Shenandoah NP). Based upon this screening level risk assessment, contaminant biomonitoring of birds is warranted at such sites, and data generated from these efforts could foster natural resource management activities.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has proposed a ban on children's metal jewelry containing more than 0.06% lead by weight. This ban would replace the current interim enforcement standard, which also includes a measurement of accessible lead. Under current guidelines, accessible lead for any component of a jewelry item must not exceed 175 μg. Critics argue that lead in jewelry is inaccessible if items are properly plated. The objective of this study was to determine whether highly leaded jewelry also has high accessible lead content. Sixty-four inexpensive, leaded jewelry items with a wide range of total lead content (all above the 0.06% threshold) were tested first for accessible lead and then for total lead, with analysis by atomic absorption spectrometry. Fifty of the items exceeded the 175-μg maximum allowed for accessible lead. Thirty-one of these items exceeded 1000 μg accessible lead, and 18 items exceeded 3000 μg accessible lead. The finding that a majority of tested items had both accessible and total lead content above current standards provides support for the rationale of simplifying the current standard by basing regulations on total lead content.

There is a general consensus that—given the magnitude of the challenges facing our nation's natural resource managers—the rate, efficiency, and effectiveness of linking research to decision making must be enhanced. Many reports have touched on this issue, most of them culminating with the exhortation to “foster more interactions between scientists and users,” but very few documents provide details or assign responsibility to drive the interactions that most agree should happen. As a result, many natural science and engineering programs “talk the talk”—that is, they say they do collaborative research with intended users; however, upon inspection, few of them “walk the walk” by effectively supporting collaboration throughout the research process. Moreover, when called to support transition to application in specific ways, research agencies often balk, most often objecting that research programs cannot afford to take any support away from funding more research. They may also argue that science works best for society when it is freed from concerns related to application. In this paper we will 1) review the cultural conflict that often underlies disagreements about collaborative research, 2) offer details on the basic ingredients required to achieve a minimum standard for collaborative research, 3) suggest an approach for determining the appropriate level of support for collaborative research, given various research goals, and 4) recommend specific steps for motivating scientists and stakeholders to participate in collaborative research.