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From laboratory to environmental conditions: a new approach for chemical’s biodegradability assessment

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Abstract

With thousands of organic chemicals released every day into our environment, Europe and other continents are confronted with increased risk of health and environmental problems. Even if a strict regulation such as REgistration, Authorization and restriction of CHemicals (REACH) is imposed and followed by industry to ensure that they prove the harmlessness of their substances, not all testing procedures are designed to cope with the complexity of the environment. This is especially true for the evaluation of persistence through biodegradability assessment guidelines. Our new approach has been to adapt “in the lab” biodegradability assessment to the environmental conditions and model the probability for a biodegradation test to be positive in the form of a logistic function of both the temperature and the viable cell density. Here, a proof of this new concept is proposed with the establishment of tri-dimensional biodegradability profiles of six chemicals (sodium benzoate, 4-nitrophenol, diethylene glycol, 2,4,5-trichlorophenol, atrazine, and glyphosate) between 4 to 30 °C and 104 to 108 cells ml−1 as can be found in environmental compartments in time and space. The results show a significant increase of the predictive power of existing screening lab-scale tests designed for soluble substances. This strategy can be complementary to those current testing strategies with the creation of new indicators to quantify environmental persistence using lab-scale tests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Nantes, UMR CNRS 6144 GEPEA, IUT Génie Biologique, La Roche sur Yon, France

    Brillet François, Durand Marie-José & Gérald Thouand

  2. Université de Lorraine, LIEC-UMR CNRS, 7360, Metz, France

    Maul Armand

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  1. Brillet François
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  2. Maul Armand
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  3. Durand Marie-José
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  4. Gérald Thouand
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Correspondence to Gérald Thouand.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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François, B., Armand, M., Marie-José, D. et al. From laboratory to environmental conditions: a new approach for chemical’s biodegradability assessment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 18684–18693 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7062-x

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