ABSTRACT
Expertise in ecotoxicology is essential for weighing the costs and benefits of the innumerable technological and industrial decisions affecting the lives. Ecotoxicology was chosen with some hesitancy because a strong and confining conventional ecosystem-or-lower emphasis is implied in many of its definitions. Ecotoxicology is a synthetic science in that it draws together insights and methods from many disciplines. There is a general lack of unanimity in ecotoxicology that sometimes leads to confusion: there seems often to be no single voice indicating how one should conduct oneself as an ecotoxicologist. The technical goal of ecotoxicology is to develop and then apply tools and methods to acquire a better understanding of contaminant fate and effects in the biosphere. It is not to propose or test an explanation or theory: that is the goal of the science of ecotoxicology.
