Review of environmental assessment criteria or equivalents

ICES agrees that a pragmatic way forward is needed in setting environmental assessment criteria (EACs) and supports in   principle   the   decision   tree   approach   developed   by   the   OSPAR   Intersessional   Correspondence   Group   on   Environmental  Assessment  Criteria  (ICG–EAC).  To  determine  EACs  ICES recognizes  the  advantages  of  using  a  method that is consistent with the approach taken under the Water Framework Directive (WFD). EAC values with high uncertainty  need  to  be  treated  cautiously  and  expert  judgement  is  required  before  they  are  applied.  EACs  andenvironmental quality standard  (EQS)  values  should  always  be  ground-truthed  against  actual  environmental  levels  (including ratios between matrices), background concentrations (BCs), and the detection limit of analytical techniques. There is a need to discriminate between EACs for mussels and for fish and, if necessary, for other taxonomic groups. In Annex 1 ICES provides comments on the EAC values proposed by ICG–EAC. ICES has also identified additional data that could support the further development of EACs to reduce uncertainty, resulting in lower assessment factors (AFs)that currently produce some very low values (Annex 2). ICES advises that further consideration should be given to the use of passive samplers and passive dosing1 as a potentially promising alternative to the current approaches.