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A Review and Analysis of Study Endpoints Relevant to the Assessment of “Long Term” Pesticide Toxicity in Avian and Mammalian Wildlife

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Abstract

The ecological assessment of long term or reproductive effects from pesticide exposure in birds and mammals is currently seen to be problematic. In birds especially, the current test results are difficult to extrapolate to a field situation. For example, whereas a majority of laboratory studies report clutch size reductions in response to graded pesticide doses, this effect is rarely, if ever, seen in the wild in response to exposure to toxicants. Also, current laboratory tests in birds provide a very truncated measure of reproductive performance. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the ecological assessment of long-term impacts to wild mammal populations suffers from an overabundance of very detailed information generated on a few rodent and non-rodent test species. It becomes critical here to identify which of the multitude of assessment endpoints should form the basis of an ecological assessment. Whether bird or mammal, I suggest that it is essential to separate parental from developmental endpoints and to apply the different effect levels to agent-based models of population growth and performance. Only then can we hope to gain a real understanding of the true long-term consequences of pesticide or other chemical exposure.

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Notes

  1. The OECD (1993) does not recognize “sub acute” but prefers instead the term “short-term repeated dose study” in the case of the 14, 21 and 28 day studies. The term “subchronic” is used to mean exposure which is generally of a duration of no more than 10% of a test animal’s lifespan – often 90 days. Chronic exposure can range from exposures of more than 10% to the entire lifespan of the animal.

  2. The NOEC is the non-observable effect concentration of pesticide in the feed; LOEC, the lowest concentration at which an endpoint is affected.

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Acknowledgments

I first want to thank Andy Hart who asked me to take part in the workshop for which this background paper was prepared and the Pesticides Safety Directorate, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK for funding the workshop. I would like also to acknowledge those individuals who have provided comments on earlier drafts, sometimes on several drafts, in particular (alphabetically) Rick Bennett, Ian Dewhurst, Anne Fairbrother, Glen Fox, Andy Hart, Connie Hart, Gerhard Joermann, Annegaaike Leopold and Richard Shore. Gerhard Joermann and the German BVL were kind enough to make their avian toxicity database available for this project. Tony Gaston dug out some useful ecological papers for me. Julia Duinker, Graham Smith and Mélanie Whiteside helped locate some of the references and put the manuscript in shape for publication.

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  1. National Wildlife Research Centre, Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, Carleton University Campus, Raven Road, K1A 0H3, Ottawa, Canada

    Pierre Mineau

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Mineau, P. A Review and Analysis of Study Endpoints Relevant to the Assessment of “Long Term” Pesticide Toxicity in Avian and Mammalian Wildlife. Ecotoxicology 14, 775–799 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-005-0028-2

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