Effects of Chemical Exposure on Whole Genome

The Environment Agency is a key delivery partner for the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan. The EA have been monitoring data for over 1500 chemicals that can be used to measure exposure at a single point in time, but there are no suitable measures of the effects on aquatic fauna or flora caused by that exposure.

The Outcome Indicator H4 on the exposure and effects of chemicals on wildlife therefore requires development of novel effects indicators to demonstrate effects at the level of the individual that can be used to predict sub-lethal effects in aquatic organisms caused by exposure to chemical mixtures. The effects measures need to be robust, easily adoptable by a regulator and provide demonstrable environmental protection.

Mixture effects are critical to understanding ecological impacts in the environment, as individuals are never exposed to single compounds in isolation, but all ecotoxicological data used to determine safe thresholds are based on exposure of a very small number of species under controlled experimental conditions using good laboratory practice standards. This leads to uncertainty in predicting impacts based on published Predicted No Effect Concentrations used to determine Environmental Quality Standards. This work will contribute to the development of an organism-based indicator to determine in-situ and in-laboratory culture effects and help to predict the scale of natural population impacts.