Research

Despite the increasing use and call for use of population or ecosystem modelling, the lack of ecological realism is widely recognised as a limitation in prospective environmental risk assessment, as is the failure to account for variability and uncertainty in an explicit and transparent manner. Indeed, it is acknowledged that organisms do not live in a single-stress pristine environment. Rather, they are constantly exposed to a series of stressors, both chemical and ecological. A step toward capturing more ecology in environmental risk assessment if the use of environmental scenarios that represent qualitatively and conceptually the environment in a fit for purpose manner for environmental risk assessment. According to Rico et al (2015), unified environmental scenarios consist of a combination of both biotic and abiotic parameters required to characterise direct and indirect exposure, effects, and recovery of species, and therefore integrating both ecological and exposure scenarios. The aim of the post-doctoral project I am currently carrying out with the environment department of the University of York and the Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre of Unilever is to develop a modelling framework for the environmental risk assessment integrating both ecological factors impacting the life cycle of organisms and chemical stress