During the 1980s, whole effluent toxicity testing was incorporated into the regulatory control program for municipal and industrial effluents in the USA, as a complement to chemical-specific limitations. While regulating effluent toxicity offered several advantages, it also required the development of means to identify and control sources of toxicity within effluents, which could include toxicants...
Whole sediment toxicity identification evaluation (TIE) methods were developed primarily in the late 1990s and early 2000s in research programs dedicated to developing manipulations and endpoints to characterize and identify causes of toxicity to benthic freshwater and marine organisms. The focus of these methods included nonionic organic contaminants, cationic and anionic metals, and ammonia. This...
In order to avoid a bias toward highly toxic but poorly bioavailable compounds in the effect-directed analysis (EDA) of soils and sediments, approaches are discussed to consider bioavailability in EDA procedures. In parallel, complimentary approaches for making toxicity identification evaluations (TIEs) more capable of performing high resolution fractionation, toxicant isolation and identification...
Environmental toxicants, such as mutagens and endocrine disruptors, can cause impact on human and environmental health and are distributed in different environmental matrices as complex mixtures. From the thousands of known toxic compounds, only a few are already regulated and monitored. There is evidence that several unidentified compounds are present in the environment due to the fact that when...
The continuous development of new chemicals enhances the complexity of environmental analysis and poses a risk to environmental and human health. Awareness is increasing that together with the chemical products on the market, the enormous number of transformation and by-products may contribute to this risk. Effect-directed analysis (EDA) has been developed to identify major toxicants in such complex...
The analyst faces a couple of challenges when screening complex mixtures. Over the past decades, several strategies were developed to overcome these problems. The review presented here provides an overview of the different strategies on the integration of separation sciences, mass spectrometry, and bioactivity screening in a single platform to allow the simultaneous screening and characterization...
An important step in effect-directed analysis (EDA) is the identification of the compound(s) causing the biological response of the bioassay. The combined use of gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) with mass spectrometry (MS) is a powerful, complementary approach for identification of unknown compounds in EDA. In the last decade, MS techniques have evolved considerably with respect...
The identification of unknown compounds isolated during Effect-Directed Analysis (EDA) is often a hurdle on the way to the successful outcome of these studies. Ever-improving separation, analytical, and biological techniques allow the isolation of more compounds and effects; however, not all of the compounds contributing to sample toxicity are easily identified. The advancement of database search...
This chapter reviews the major advances and challenges in effect-directed analysis (EDA) of mutagenic chemicals in ambient airborne particles. Mutagens are chemicals that can cause mutations – inheritable changes in the genetic code that can give rise to adverse health effects. The majority of studies dealing with EDA of mutagens in airborne particles combine liquid chromatographic fractionation of...
The topic of endocrine disruption in the aquatic environment is a clear example of a problem-driven research area. Field observations of endocrine abnormalities in wild life have prompted the growth of scientific attention and concern about the topic. Multiple studies have reported the presence of endocrine disrupting activities in various compartments of the aquatic environment, without, at the time,...
The history of effects-directed investigations of pulp and paper mill effluents has been driven primarily by the environmental effects associated with mill discharges. The first effect to confront the industry was acute toxicity to aquatic biota. Through a series of effects-directed studies in the 1970s and 1980s the causative agents were elucidated, subsequent regulations enacted, and effluent treatment...
Sediments and associated biota represent important sources for the exposure of aquatic organisms to environmental toxicants including dioxin-like compounds, genotoxic chemicals, and endocrine disruptors. One of the key challenges that environmental toxicologists and risk assessors are facing is the characterization and assessment of toxicological risks associated with such complex matrices such as...
The effect-directed analysis (EDA) methodology is an important component in site-specific risk assessment of contaminated aquatic systems, but improves its relevance in assessment strategies when confirmed on ecosystem level. Several approaches are available to confirm the ecological relevance of EDA results, but just a few studies exist, directly linking EDA processes with field studies in the aquatic...