Toxicity of drilling discharges

Abstract

From the Extended Summary: "The purpose of the “Toxicity” task was to contribute to the overall objective of the ERMS project (Environmental Risk Management System); to develop an EIF tool for drilling discharges (EIFdd). In the present report, the output from this task is described; the focus is on toxicity as the stressor. The concept of the EIFdd addresses ecological risk assessment in both the water column and sediment compartments. The following topics have been addressed in the present task: 1) Evaluation and selection of metals and organic drilling discharge chemicals for inclusion in the risk calculation in the water column and the sediment; 2) sediment toxicity literature review on selected metals and hydrocarbons; 3) summary of necessary input data (partition coefficients) for calculation of the PEC for drilling waste chemicals in the water column and the sediment compartments; 4) evaluation and selection of approaches for calculation of PNEC values for the water column and the sediment compartment. Validation of the environmental risk assessment; toxicity threshold values derived from literature data versus field data.”