Species sensitivity distribution for arsenic toxicity on plant based on soil culture data: Implications for benchmarks of soil risk assessments

Abstract

Species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) have attracted increased interest to ecological risk assessment due to greater statistical confidence and transparent. However, it is of difficulty to apply the SSD approach to terrestrial ecological risk assessments for the scarcity of uniform terrestrial ecotoxicological data. Literature soil culture data of arsenic (As) toxicity on plant were reanalyzed. Toxicity coefficients (EC10 and EC50) were systematically calculated using S-shape dose response model. SSD of As for plant were constructed based on 161 literature-derived toxicological records of 28 species. The S-shape Boltzmann model describes the constructed SSD curves well, and the calculated soil As concentration causing 5% of plant species suffering a damage of reducing growth by about 10% (EC10-HC5) and 50% (EC50-HC5) are 7.83 and 25.27 mg·kg-1, respectively. The constructed SSD of As is important and necessary for the derivation of Ecological Soil Screening Levels for terrestrial ecological risk assessments. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.