Internal benchmarking improves precision and reduces animal requirements for determination of fish bioconcentration factors.

The enactment of new chemical regulations has generated a large need for the measurement of the fish bioconcentration factor (BCF). Past experience shows that the BCF determination lacks precision, requires large numbers of fish, and is costly. A new protocol was tested that shortens the experiment from up to 12 weeks for existing protocols to 2 weeks and reduces the number of fish by a factor of 5, while introducing internal benchmarking for the BCF determination. Rainbow trout were simultaneously exposed to 11 chemicals. The BCFs were quantified using one of the test chemicals, musk xylene, as a benchmark. These were compared with BCFs measured in a parallel experiment based on the OECD 305 guideline. The agreement was <20% for five chemicals and between 20%-25% for two further, while two chemicals lay outside the BCF operating window of the experiment and one was lost due to analytical difficulties. This agreement is better than that observed in a BCF Gold Standard Database. Internal benchmarking allows the improvement of the precision of BCF determination in parallel to large reduction in costs and fish requirements.

[1]  Watze de Wolf,et al.  Animal Use Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement: Development of an Integrated Testing Strategy for Bioconcentration of Chemicals in Fish , 2007 .

[2]  Watze de Wolf,et al.  Animal Use Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement: Development of an Integrated Testing Strategy for Bioconcentration of Chemicals in Fish , 2007, Integrated environmental assessment and management.

[3]  J. Pawliszyn,et al.  Tissue-specific in vivo bioconcentration of pharmaceuticals in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) using space-resolved solid-phase microextraction. , 2010, Environmental science & technology.

[4]  J. Pawliszyn,et al.  Application of solid-phase microextraction for in vivo laboratory and field sampling of pharmaceuticals in fish. , 2008, Environmental science & technology.

[5]  M. Adolfsson-Erici,et al.  Measuring bioconcentration factors in fish using exposure to multiple chemicals and internal benchmarking to correct for growth dilution , 2012, Environmental toxicology and chemistry.

[6]  Munn Sharon j.,et al.  Alternative Approaches Can Reduce the Use of Test Animals under REACH. , 2004 .

[7]  M. Adolfsson-Erici,et al.  In-vivo passive sampling to measure elimination kinetics in bioaccumulation tests. , 2012, Chemosphere.

[8]  M. Adolfsson-Erici,et al.  A flow-through passive dosing system for continuously supplying aqueous solutions of hydrophobic chemicals to bioconcentration and aquatic toxicity tests. , 2012, Chemosphere.

[9]  T. Springer,et al.  Assessment of an approach to estimating aquatic bioconcentration factors using reduced sampling , 2008, Environmental toxicology and chemistry.