ABSTRACT
Controlling and combating water pollution dates back to the early 1970s, whereas soil pollution has primarily received attention within the last decade. In 1992, on request of the Danish Environmental Agency, the National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) and the Water Quality Institute (VKI) evaluated the principles and the state of the art for deriving ecotoxicological soil quality criteria (ESQC). Based
on this work, they formed a number of recommendations (for further details see Pedersen and Pedersen, 1993). It was regarded possible to establish at least two different types of criteria: one set of criteria protecting all target groups, i.e., organisms living in the soil except vertebrates, against any adverse effects caused by chemicals and another set considering the current or future use of the land and only protecting a selected group of the organisms. In the succeeding work, as described in this chapter, only the criteria protecting all groups of organisms were considered. To derive these criteria two methods were proposed. The first included the use of species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) and the other included the use of such assessment factors as known in risk assessment of chemicals within the European Union (EU) (CSTE/EEC, 1994). The development of compound-specific ecotoxicological quality criteria for both the aquatic and the terrestrial environment were initiated based on the above recommendations. For the aquatic environment, data were extrapolated to quality criteria using only the assessment factor method according to the OECD guidelines (Pedersen, 1994), because the assessors for this compartment determined there was insufficient evidence for using the SSD-based method. This displays the various opinions by different experts on the SSD-based approach. As SSDs were not used for the water quality criteria these will not be further discussed in this context. For the terrestrial environment the ecotoxicologicalderived criteria were based on both the assessment factor and SSD-based extrapolations combined with a direct expert evaluation of all the data (Scott-Fordsmand et al.,
1996). ESQC were produced for 34 chemical compounds in the period of 1994 to 1996 (Scott-Fordsmand and Bruus-Pedersen, 1995; Jensen and FolkerHansen, 1995; Jensen et al.,
The goal of the ecotoxicological-derived SQC was to protect the function and structure of the ecosystems against effects caused by pollutants. Ideally, adequate data for the effects of a compound should be obtained alone and in combination with other compounds.
