An approach to assess the regulatory relevance of micro-evolutionary effects in ecological risk assessment of chemicals: A case-study with Cd
Through ecological risk assessment (ERA) policy makers try to set protective norms for harmful chemicals in the environment. Typically, such ERAs are based on ecotoxicological research performed in the lab. However, these laboratory conditions tend to lack some measure of realism compared to the actual situation in the environment. For instance, usually only one particular individual of a species is considered in ecotoxicological tests, while in the environment multiple, different individuals are present. As with us, humans, some of these individuals can cope better with a certain chemical in the environment than others. Under continuous presence of such a chemical these, more tolerant, individuals will survive and reproduce, while the other individuals will perish. Overall, the group of individuals will become more tolerant to the chemical, a process which is called micro-evolution. In this most recent paper an approach is suggested to take this micro-evolutionary processes into account in ERA to, ultimately, make our risk assessment of chemicals in the environment more realistic.