Amid the growing concerns about air toxics from pollution sources, much emphasis has been placed on their impacts on human health. However, there has been limited research conducted to assess the cumulative country-wide impact of air toxics on both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as well as the complex interactions within food webs. Traditional approaches, including those of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), lack versatility in addressing diverse emission sources and their distinct ecological repercussions. This study addresses these gaps by introducing the Ecological Health Assessment Methodology (EHAM), a novel approach that transcends traditional methods by enabling both comprehensive country-wide and detailed regional ecological risk assessments across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. EHAM also advances the field by developing new food-chain multipliers (magnification factors) for localized ecosystem food web models. Employing traditional ecological multimedia risk assessment of toxics’ fate and transport techniques as its foundation, this study extends US EPA methodologies to a broader range of emission sources.
Read more at MDPI
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