Ecological Soil Screening Levels For Invertebrates at Explosives-Contaminated Sites: Supporting Sustainability of Army Testing and Training

Le résumé fourni par la source

The Army Strategy for the Environment applies an ecosystem approach to managing natural resources on Army installations. It incorporates the principles of sustainability across the Army into all functional areas. We conducted investigations to develop critical environmental data required for successful management of Army installations in a sustainable manner, and for the knowledge-based decision making. Assessment and protection of the terrestrial environment at Army installations can be advanced by developing and applying scientifically based Ecological Soil Screening Levels (Eco-SSL) that identify concentrations of contaminant energetic materials (EM) in soil that present an acceptable ecological risk, as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA, 2005). Without Eco-SSL, the current state of knowledge concerning the nature and extent of residual contamination with EM at U.S. Army installations is insufficient to ensure management of training and testing ranges as sustainable resources. We established the toxicity benchmark data necessary for deriving soil invertebrate-based Eco-SSL values for RDX, HMX, TNT, 2,4-DNT, 2,6-DNT, and TNB. We determined these benchmarks using standardized toxicity bioassays. Special consideration in assessing the EM toxicity for developing ecotoxicological benchmarks was given to examining the effects of weathering and aging of EM in soil on resulting exposure effects for test species. Soil invertebrate bioassays were conducted under experimental conditions preferred for establishing toxicological benchmarks for deriving an Eco-SSL (USEPA, 2005), using a Sassafras sandy loam soil that supports relatively high bioavailability of EM.

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