To what extent is "standardized artificial soil" standard and artificial?
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Artificial soil was firstly introduced as a substrate for the earthworm acute toxicity test and it has been standardized as a medium for other soil tests too. Despite the fact that standardized reference material is necessary, several problematic issues exist which must be considered: Can be the results easily extrapolated to natural soils? How significant is variability of artificial soils from different labs? Our studies may help to clarify some of these issues. In the first study, the loss, extraction, and bioavailability of phenanthrene were compared in three artificial and three natural soils of the same organic carbon content. It seems according to our data that the results measured in the artificial soils can underestimate the situation in natural soils almost by one order of magnitude. In the second study, artificial soils were collected from EU labs and their properties were compared. We found that these artificial soils differed significantly in soil properties and also in sorption of pollutants. It is still an unanswered question, to which degree these findings may influence the toxicity results in the framework of ecological risk assessment. |
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