Aquatic life water quality criteria derived via the UC Davis method: I. Organophosphate insecticides

A new methodology for deriving freshwater aquatic life water quality criteria,developed by the University of California Davis, was used to derive criteria for three organophosphate insecticides. The UC Davis methodology resulted in similar criteria to other accepted methods, and incorporated new approaches that enable criteria generation in cases where the existing USEPA guidance cannot be used.Acute and chronic water quality criteria were derived for chlorpyrifos (10 and 10 ng/L, respectively), diazinon (200 and 70 ng/L, respectively), and malathion(170 and 28 ng/L, respectively). For acute criteria derivation, Burr Type III SSDs were fitted to the chlorpyrifos and diazinon acute toxicity data sets while an alternative assessment factor procedure was used for malathion because that acute data set did not contain adequate species diversity to use a distribution.ACRs were used to calculate chronic criteria because there was a dearth of chronic data in all cases, especially for malathion, for which there was a lack of paired acute and chronic invertebrate data. Another alternate procedure enabled calculation of the malathion chronic criterion by combining a default ratio with the experimentally derived ratios. A review of the diazinon chronic criterion found it to be under protective of cladoceran species, so a more protective criterion was calculated using a lower distributional estimate. The acute and chronic data sets were assembled using a transparent and consistent system for judging the relevance and reliability of studies, and the individual study review notes are included.The resulting criteria are unique in that they were reviewed to ensure particular protection of sensitive and threatened and endangered species, and mixture toxicity is incorporated into criteria compliance for all three compounds.For chlorpyrifos and diazinon, the UCDM generated criteria similar to the long-standing USEPA (1985) method, with less taxa requirements, a more statistically robust distribution, and the incorporation of new advances in risk assessment and ecotoxicology. According to the USEPA (1985) method, the data set gathered for malathion would not be sufficient to calculate criteria because it did not contain data for a benthic crustacean. Benthic crustacean data is also required to use a distributional calculation method by the UCDM, but when data is lacking the UCDM provides an alternate calculation method." The resulting criteria are associated with higher, unquantifiable uncertainty, but they are likely more accurate than values generated using static safety factors, which are currently common in risk assessment.