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Abstract

To date there has been no clear guidance for assessing the potential environmental effects and impacts of selenium (Se) contamination; such activities have been highly site-specific. A Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Pellston Workshop held February 22-28, 2009, which involved a multidisciplinary and international group of scientists, managers and policymakers, established the present state of the science and provided globally-applicable guidance for assessing and managing the environmental effects of Se. Key information from the SETAC Pellston includes: traditional methods for predicting toxicity on the basis of exposure to dissolved concentrations do not work for Se; enrichment functions can be used to predict Se bioaccumulation at the base of food webs; uptake by individual species and in steps of the food web can be described by a trophic transfer function; Se partitioning is unique among metal and metalloid contaminants and requires site-specific risk assessments to a much greater extent than most other contaminants. Key words: selenium, aquatic, risk assessment, reproduction