Bioavailability, Toxicity and Risk Relationships in Ecosystems:The Path Ahead
R. Naidu, N.S. Bolan and D.C. Adriano
Remediation of contaminated sites is often established on the basis of
risk assessments that rely on both toxicological impact on ecosystem and
human health. The success of bioremediation, contaminated site rehabilitation
and production of contaminant free food is largely dependent on the availability
of the contaminants for plants, animals and microbial biota in the terrestrial
environment. Consequently 'bioavailability' is used as the key indicator
of potential risk that contaminants pose to both environmental and human
health. However, tl1e definition of the term 'bioavailability' and the
concept on which it is based are unclear, the methods adopted vary throughout
the world and therefore there is no single standard technique for the
assessment of either plant availability of contaminants or their ecotoxicological
impacts on soil biota. In this book, while attempting to define the bioavailability,
we have taken into consideration that bioavailability is a function of
both soil, nature of contaminant, species/receptor organisms and environmental
perturbations including the duration of contamination (i.e., contaminant
ageing).
SREL Reprint #2762
Naidu, R., N. Bolan and D. Adriano. 2003. Bioavailability, toxicity and risk relationships in ecosystems: The path ahead. p. 331-338. In Bioavailability, Toxicity and Risk Relationships in Ecosystems, edited by R. Naidu, V. Gupta, S. S. Rogers, R. Kookana, N. Bolan, and D. Adriano. Science Publishers, Inc.
