Ecotoxicological assessment of organic wastes spread on land: Towards a proposal of a suitable test battery.

The land spreading of organic wastes in agriculture is a common practice in Europe, under the regulation of the Directive 86/278/EEC. One of the objectives of this Directive is to prevent harmful effects of organic wastes on soil, plants and animals. Despite this regulatory framework, there is still a lack of harmonized ecotoxicological test strategy to assess the environmental hazard of such wastes. The aim of this study was to provide a first step towards the a priori ecotoxicological assessment of organic wastes before their land use. For that purpose, nine different organic wastes were assessed using direct (i.e. terrestrial tests) and indirect (i.e. tests on water eluates) approaches, for a total of thirteen endpoints. Then, multivariate analyzes were used to discriminate the most relevant test strategy, among the application rates and bioassays used. From our results, a draft of test strategy was proposed, using terrestrial bioassays (i.e. earthworms and plants) and a concentration range between one and ten times the recommended application rates of organic wastes.

Cigarette butts: A small but hazardous waste, according to European regulation.

The emergence of companies collecting cigarette butts (CB) leads to a new waste stream, exclusively made of butts, whereas they were previously mixed with household and municipal waste. In order to conclude on the classification of this new stream, according to the Waste Framework Directive, three cigarette butts samples were analyzed and submitted to ecotoxicological tests. Hazard properties HP 4 (irritant - skin irritation and eye damage), HP 5 (specific target organ toxicity/aspiration toxicity), HP 6 (acute toxicity), HP 7 (carcinogenic), HP 8 (corrosive), HP 10 (toxic for reproduction), HP 11 (mutagenic) and HP 13 (sensitising) have been assessed by calculation, thanks to the analytical results. HP 14 (ecotoxic) has been evaluated both through calculation method and ecotoxicity tests. Even if the obtained mass balance was not complete, it was still sufficient to classify by calculation CB as hazardous waste, by HP 6 (toxicity), mainly due to their nicotine content. A classification by HP 14 (ecotoxicity) was also determined but only by ecotoxicological tests results, whatever the applied framework (French or "harmonized" test battery). These results highlight the limitation of the classification methodology adopted by European Council which necessitates to identify all compounds to perform a full detailed assessment.

Coupling of OECD standardized test and immunomarkers to select the most environmentally benign ionic liquids option--towards an innovative "safety by design" approach.

This paper proposed a potential industrial accompaniment to reduce ionic liquid harmfulness by a novel combination of OECD Daphnia magna standardized test and fish immunomarkers. The combination of these two tests allowed multicriteria examination of ILs impacts in different organisms and trophic levels. The work provided new data for legislation and opened a door towards an integrative environmental evaluation due to direct implications of immune system in fish and ecosystem health. Whatever the species, each IL tested induced deleterious effects suggesting that toxic impact was especially due to IL lipophilicity properties. Nevertheless, cation moieties of ILs seemed to draw overall toxicity of ILs to significant extent as supported by lower cell mortality shown with imidazolium-based ILs compared to phosphonium-based ILs. However, the anions moieties have some additional effect, as revealed by quite dissimilar toxicity within same IL family. Concerning the more integrative biomarkers, the cationic-based ILs tested possessed also dissimilar effect on immune system of fish, especially on leucocyte distribution, lysosomal membrane integrity and phagocytosis activity. These results confirm that ILs toxicity could be influenced by design and that chemical engineering processes can integrate ecological footprint reduction strategies for successful IL utilization in the future.