Prioritisation of CECs in the Marine Environment Using Hazard-Based Filtering and Ranking Approaches

The increase in the use and production of chemicals has led to a growing number of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the marine environment. A prioritisation strategy is necessary to study the environmental occurrence and effects of the most impactful chemicals in the marine ecosystem, guiding decisions on which compounds should be included in routine monitoring. To address the lack of marine-specific prioritisation schemes, a hazard-based prioritisation tool was developed for CECs within the European Union (EU) project An Integrated Approach for Assessing Impacts on the Marine Environment (CONTRAST) . A comprehensive literature review identified the most frequently used criteria for prioritising CECs. Subsequently, the outcomes of an internal survey among project partners on the most important criteria to be included in the prioritisation scheme were used as a basis. CECs were filtered using three parallel schemes: persistence and bioaccumulation (PB), toxicity (T), and persistence and mobility (PM) using cut-off values adapted from the EU regulatory framework for PBT and PMT assessments. The filtering of chemicals was aided by a tool developed in the PikMe project, which was funded by the Norwegian Environment Agency. The PikMe tool contains a database regarding physical, chemical, and PBT properties, tonnage, and EU regulations of approximately 1.1 million chemical substances gathered from different data sources. The filtered chemicals were assessed further and scored based on their modes of action, occurrence in the marine and freshwater environments, and emission. A ranking based on the final score resulted in a list of around 8500 chemicals with high diversity regarding their functional use (e.g., pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, plasticisers, personal care products, and biocides). The top 100 contains the compounds that will be selected for use within CONTRAST for the distribution, fate, and effects studies, determining their impacts on the marine biodiversity and providing an effective integrated monitoring framework to monitor their impacts on marine life.