Environmental Engineering
Case Study
Technical Guidance for Water quality Standards
Development and Implementation
GLEC developed a probabilistic approach to establish Ambient
Water Quality Criteria (AWQC) for copper using the Biotic Ligand
Model (BLM). This approach has been incorporated in the current
BLM software. The graph (below) shows an example simulation of
copper concentrations, instantaneous copper criteria predicted by
the BLM, and the fixed site criterion determined by the probabilistic
approach.
GLEC also validated methods proposed by EPA
to predict bioaccumulation of chemicals in fish
for AWQC, using PCB congener data from the
Green Bay Mass Balance study and the Hudson
River datasets. An example graph from the validation
is shown at left. This effort was published
in the journal Environmental Science and Technology
(Burkhard, L.P., Endicott, D.D., Cook,
P.M., Sappington, K.G. and E.L. Winchester.
2003. Evaluation of 2 Methods for Prediction
of Bioaccumulation Factors. Envir. Science
Technol., 37 (20): 4626-4634).
Contact: Doug Endicott, Environmental Engineer
Click to Email
