Tag Archives: risk assessment

We Should Take a Holistic Approach to Environmental Risk Assessment Following Oil Spills

A guest editor post by Sharon Hook, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere

With the recent pipeline leak in the waters off of , USA, oil spills are once again in the headlines. We are hearing the concerns of the affected communities about what the consequences of this spill will be for wildlife, fisheries, and safe use of the beaches. After all of the decades of oil spill-related research, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the environmental impacts of oil spills. It is a good opportunity, to ask ourselves as environmental scientists, if we are asking the right questions in our research into the impacts of oil spills, and if we are setting up our studies with the most environmentally relevant approaches.

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Can Polymers Represent an Aquatic Risk—What’s Known and Unknown?

The following post is one of a series previewing the research that will be presented at the held virtually as SciCon (3–7 May 2020, formerly to be held in Dublin, Ireland).

A guest post by Hans Sanderson, Anna Magdalene, Brun Hansen, Scott Belanger, Kristin Connors, and Monica Lam

Polymers are most known for their use in plastics (e.g., polypropylene), and while it is true that all plastics are polymers, it is not true that all polymers are plastics. Polymers have a much wider range of origins and uses and contain a wide variety of materials with differing structural attributes, functionalization, and physical and chemical properties.

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Effects of Pesticides on Bird Reproduction: A Novel Model for Risk Assessment

By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, many bird populations around the world show signs of trouble—in our specific case not because of gas exposure, but because of pesticide exposure. Unlike the canary in the coal mine, the endpoints for assessing pesticide exposure are not only related to death, but also to a variety of effects that involve the birds’ eggs.
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