title: Refinement of biodegradation tests methodologies and the proposed utility of new microbial ecology techniques.
abstract: Society's reliance upon chemicals over the last few decades has led to their increased production, application and release into the environment. Determination of chemical persistence is crucial for risk assessment and management of chemicals. Current established OECD biodegradation guidelines enable testing of chemicals under laboratory conditions but with an incomplete consideration of factors that can impact on chemical persistence in the environment. The suite of OECD biodegradation tests do not characterise microbial inoculum and often provide little insight into pathways of degradation. The present review considers limitations with the current OECD biodegradation tests and highlights novel scientific approaches to chemical fate studies. We demonstrate how the incorporation of molecular microbial ecology methods (i.e., 'omics') may improve the underlying mechanistic understanding of biodegradation processes, and enable better extrapolation of data from laboratory based test systems to the relevant environment, which would potentially improve chemical risk assessment and decision making. We outline future challenges for relevant stakeholders to modernise OECD biodegradation tests and put the 'bio' back into biodegradation.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Electronic address: AKowalcz@scj.com.
authors.forename: Agnieszka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kowalczyk
authors.affiliation: School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Timothy James
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Unilever, Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook MK441LQ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Oliver Richard
authors.initials: OR
authors.lastname: Price
authors.affiliation: AstraZeneca, Mereside, Alderley Park, Macclesfield SK10 4TF, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jason Richard
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Snape
authors.affiliation: Unilever, Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook MK441LQ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Roger Albert
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: van Egmond
authors.affiliation: Unilever, Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook MK441LQ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Christopher James
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Finnegan
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Hendrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schäfer
authors.affiliation: School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Russell James
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Davenport
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Gary Douglas
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Bending
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism; D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D023281:Genomics; D055432:Metabolomics; D066150:Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development; D040901:Proteomics; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid
keywords: Biodegradation; Chemical risk assessment; Microbial ecology; OECD tests; Omics; Persistence