Water Quality Criteria For Freshwater Fish

Water Quality Criteria for Freshwater Fish, Second Edition, is a collection of 12 technical papers on water quality criteria for European freshwater fish, together with a report on fish toxicity testing procedures that have been produced for the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission (EIFAC)—an intergovernmental organization with a current membership of 24 countries. Each chapter reviews a particular water quality characteristic for European inland fisheries, although the effects of mixtures with other harmful substances have been described for some of them. These characteristics include water quality criteria for finely suspended solids and pH values; water temperature; the effect of ammonia; phenolic wastes; dissolved oxygen; chemistry and toxicology of chlorine; and toxicity of zinc, copper, and cadmium. The reports in this volume will be useful not only to the member countries of the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission, but also to those concerned with the management of inland waters and their fishery resources in other continents.

Finely divided solids. Extreme pH value. Water temperature. Ammonia. Monohydric phenols. Dissolved oxygen. Chlorine. Zinc. Copper. Cadmium. Mixtures of toxicants. Fish toxicity testing procedures.

Section 304(a) (1) of the Clean Water Act 33 U.S.C. 1314(a) (1) requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publish and periodically update ambient water quality criteria. These criteria are to accurately reflect the latest scientific knowledge (a) on the kind and extent of all identifiable effects on health and welfare including, but not limited to, plankton, fish shellfish, wildlife, plant life, shorelines, beaches, aesthetics, and recreation which may be expected from the presence of pollutants in any body of water including ground water; (b) on the concentration and dispersal of pollutants, or their byproducts, through biological, physical, and chemical processes; and (c) on the effects of pollutants on biological community diversity, productivity, and stability, including information on the factors affecting rates of eutrophication and organic and inorganic sedimentation for varying types of receiving waters. In a continuing effort to provide those who use EPA's water quality and human health criteria with up-to-date criteria values and associated information, the document was assembled. The document includes summaries of all the contaminants for which EPA has developed criteria recommendations.

For water pollution control purposes, the concentration-addition model for describing the joint effects of mixtures of toxicants on aquatic organisms is appropriate; in this model the contribution of each component in the mixture is expressed as a proportion of the aqueous concentration producing a given response in a given time. Examination of available data using this model shows that for mixtures of toxicants found in sewage and industrial effluents, the joint acutely-lethal toxicity to fish and other aquatic organisms is close to that predicted assuming simple addition of the proportional contribution from each toxicant. The observed median value for the joint effect of these toxicants on fish is 0.95 of that predicted, and the corresponding collective value for sewage effluents, river waters, and a few industrial wastes, based on the toxicity of their constituents, is 0.85, while that for pesticides is 1.3. The less-than-additive effect of commonly-occurring toxicants in some mixtures may be partly attributable to small fractions of their respective LC50 values having little or no additional effect.