Journal ArticleDOI
Calculation and Uses of Mean Sediment Quality Guideline Quotients: A Critical Review
TLDR
The mean sediment quality guideline quotient (mSQGQ) as discussed by the authors is calculated by dividing the concentrations of chemicals in sediments by their respective SQGs and calculating the mean of the quotients for the individual chemicals.Abstract:
Fine-grained sediments contaminated with complex mixtures of organic and inorganic chemical contaminants can be toxic in laboratory tests and/or cause adverse impacts to resident benthic communities. Effects-based, sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) have been developed over the past 20 years to aid in the interpretation of the relationships between chemical contamination and measures of adverse biological effects. Mean sediment quality guideline quotients (mSQGQ) can be calculated by dividing the concentrations of chemicals in sediments by their respective SQGs and calculating the mean of the quotients for the individual chemicals. The resulting index provides a method of accounting for both the presence and the concentrations of multiple chemicals in sediments relative to their effects-based guidelines. Analyses of considerable amounts of data demonstrated that both the incidence and magnitude of toxicity in laboratory tests and the incidence of impairment to benthic communities increases incrementally with increasing mSQGQs. Such concentration/response relationships provide a basis for estimating toxicological risks to sediment-dwelling organisms associated with exposure to contaminated sediments with a known degree of accuracy. This sediment quality assessment tool has been used in numerous surveys and studies since 1994. Nevertheless, mean SQGQs have some important limitations and underlying assumptions that should be understood by sediment quality assessors. This paper provides an overview of the derivation methods and some of the principal advantages, assumptions, and limitations in the use of this sediment assessmenttool. Ideally, mean SQGQs should be included with other measures including results of toxicity tests and benthic community surveys to provide a weight of evidence when assessing the relative quality of contaminated sediments.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Fate and effects of anthropogenic chemicals in mangrove ecosystems: A review
TL;DR: The scientific literature for fate and effects of non-nutrient contaminant concentrations is skewed for reports describing sediment contamination and bioaccumulation for trace metals, which hinders chemical risk assessments and validation of effects-based criteria.
Journal ArticleDOI
Assessment of the environmental significance of heavy metal pollution in surficial sediments of the River Po
TL;DR: The magnitude and ecological relevance of metal pollution of the middle Po river deriving from the River Lambro tributary was investigated by applying different sediment quality assessment approaches, as well as by investigations of the partitioning patterns of target heavy metals.
Journal ArticleDOI
A new index for assessing heavy metals contamination in sediments: A case study
TL;DR: In this article, a new index was formulated for assessing severity of heavy metal pollution in aquatic environments, which is more reliable and logical compared with other investigated indices for evaluating heavy metals pollution in sediments of aquatic environments.
Journal ArticleDOI
Organic pollutants (PAHs, PCBs) in sediments from the Mar Piccolo in Taranto (Ionian Sea, Southern Italy)
Nicola Cardellicchio,Alessandro Buccolieri,Santina Giandomenico,Luigi Lopez,Filomena Pizzulli,Lucia Spada +5 more
TL;DR: An ecotoxicological risk for benthic organisms is suggested mainly in the first inlet, where high concentrations of PCBs were found in sediments influenced by harbour activities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sediment-bound heavy metals as indicators of human influence and biological risk in coastal water bodies
Gavin F. Birch,M. A. Olmos +1 more
TL;DR: Birch, G.F., and Olmos, M. as discussed by the authors used sediment-bound heavy metals as indicators of human influence and biological risk in coastal water bodies, which is an easy and inexpensive indicator to identify the pristine condition and give baseline information against which future management strategies may be benchmarked.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Incidence of adverse biological effects within ranges of chemical concentrations in marine and estuarine sediments
TL;DR: In this article, matching biological and chemical data were compiled from numerous modeling, laboratory, and field studies performed in marine and estuarine sediments, and two guideline values (an effects range low and an effects range median) were determined for nine trace metals, total PCBs, two pesticides, 13 polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and three classes of PAHs.
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Development and evaluation of consensus-based sediment quality guidelines for freshwater ecosystems.
TL;DR: It was concluded that the consensus-based SQGs provide a reliable basis for assessing sediment quality conditions in freshwater ecosystems.
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Development and evaluation of sediment quality guidelines for Florida coastal waters.
TL;DR: The weight-of-evidence approach to the development of sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) was modified to support the derivation of biological effects-based SQGs for Florida coastal waters, which were demonstrated to provide practical, reliable and predictive tools for assessing sediment quality.
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Predicting toxicity in marine sediments with numerical sediment quality guidelines
TL;DR: The ERhls and PELs indicated high predictive ability in samples in which many substances exceeded these concentrations, and the incidence of toxicity increased with increases in concentntions of mixtures of chemicals normalized to the SQGs.
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Classifying probabilities of acute toxicity in marine sediments with empirically derived sediment quality guidelines
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used matching, marine sediment chemistry, and toxicity data (n = 1,513) to determine both the frequency of acute toxicity to amphipods and average percentage survival in laboratory bioassays within ranges in toxicant concentrations.