Lee Walker, lead scientist for the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme, recently had a paper published with colleagues from the Life APEX project (https://lifeapex.eu/), setting out recommendations for use of monitoring data from apex predators in support of prioritisation and risk assessment of chemicals in Europe.
The paper concludes that chemical data of apex species from freshwater, marine and terrestrial compartments should become an essential component in future chemical assessment and management across regulations, with the purpose to:-
- validate registration data with ‘real world’ measurements and evaluate the predictability of current models;
- identify and prioritise hazardous chemicals for further assessment;
- use data on food web magnification as one line of evidence to assess biomagnification;
- determine the presence of (bio)transformations products and typical chemical mixtures; and
- evaluate the effectiveness of risk management measures by trend analysis.
The full article can be viewed here: https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-022-00665-5