Use of Biota-Sediment Accumulation Factors to Assess Similarity of Nonionic Organic Chemical Exposure to Benthically-Coupled Organisms of Differing Trophic Mode

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of developing Sediment Quality Criteria (SQC) to specify the acceptable degree of risk from sediment-mediated chemical exposure for the protection of benthically-coupled organisms. In this study, potential differences in chemical exposure for benthic organisms of differing habitats or feeding types were evaluated through the use of Biota-Sediment Accumulation Factors (BSAFs). It was hypothesized that If species of different habitats have similar exposures, then the BSAF values should not be different. The BSAFs are calculated using the concentrations of chemicals in an organism (&mgr;g/g lipid) divided by the concentrations of the same chemicals in sediment (&mgr;g/gOC). Data from both freshwater and saltwater studies that met specified criteria for data quality were obtained from published papers or reports. These included three laboratory and five field studies containing 27 species and 4054 BSAF values. The BSAFs were intercompared for similarity of central tendency as grouped by chemical class (PCBs, PAHs, pesticides), individual species, and species grouped by habitat (infaunal deposit feeder, scavenger, filter feeder, and benthically-coupled fish). Plots of BSAFs grouped by class and KOW revealed that the BSAFs for the PAHs were uniformly lower (mean 0.34) than the PCB (1.03) or pesticide (1.36) classes. For the PCBs, the BSAFs for all species exhibited a KOW dependency with decreased bioaccumulation evident above and below the range of 5.99-7.27 log10 KOW. In order to optimize the detection of species/habitat differences in the BSAFs, further analyses were segregated by chemical class and excluded PCB data outside the above KOW range. These analyses revealed similar BSAF values for various species both within and among habitat groups, and indicated that the sum total of exposures from all routes is similar across species. This similarity of chemical exposure across benthic species, and the similarity of sensitivities between benthic species and species used to derive WQC FCVs supports the applicability of SQC for all benthic organisms as a group.