Toxicological benchmarks for screening of potential contaminants of concern for effects on aquatic biota on the Oak Ridge Reservation, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

This report presents potential screening benchmarks for protection of aquatic life from contaminants in water. Because there is no guidance for screening benchmarks, a set of alternative benchmarks is presented here. The alternative benchmarks are based on different conceptual approaches to estimating concentrations causing significant effects. For the upper screening benchmark, they are the acute National Ambient Water Quality Criterion (NAWQC) and the acute pesticide advisory value (a concentration that is estimated with 95% confidence not to exceed the unknown acute NAWQC for those chemicals with no NAWQC). The alternative chronic benchmarks are the chronic NAWQC, the chronic pesticide screening value, the lowest chronic values for fish and daphnids, the lowest concentration that produces a response in 20% of fish and daphnids [effective concentration 20 (EC[sub 20])] as established through chronic toxicity tests, the estimated EC[sub 20] for a sensitive species, and the concentration estimated to cause a 20% reduction in the recruit abundance of largemouth bass. It is recommended that ambient chemical concentrations be compared to all of these benchmarks. To the extent that toxicity data are available, this report presents the alternative benchmarks for chemicals that have been detected on the Oak Ridge Reservation. It also presents the data used to calculate the benchmarks, and the sources of the data. It compares the benchmarks and discusses their relative conservatism and utility