ABSTRACT
Although knowledge of the existence of a link between biological dysfunction and the environment is very old, as testied by writings dating from more than 2000 years ago (Hippocrates, translated by Littré 1861), serious consideration of pollution by both society and scientists is a more recent phenomenon. Rachel Carson, ghting against the unreasonable use of organochlorine pesticides and their effects on living organisms, in her book Silent Spring (Carson 1962), can be considered a pioneer for ecotoxicological studies. After a period when the effects of the dispersion of chemical compounds into the environment tended to be evaluated a posteriori and possibly corrected, a will to carry out evaluations a priori was essential in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Until the end of the 1980s, monitoring of the environment was based on conventional chemical methods of variable signicance (chromatography, spectrophotometry, electrochemistry, radiochemistry, etc.), generally leading to the measurement of concentrations of chemical substances considered to be dangerous, in water, sediments, and organisms living in coastal ecosystems.
