Standardization of the Preparation and Quantitation of Water-accommodated Fractions of Petroleum for Toxicity Testing

Oil spill response can be highly affected by the perceived costs and benefits of a particular countermeasure. Responders’ perceptions of these can be influenced by the way in which scientific data are collected and presented. To date, a large amount of information has been generated on the aquatic toxicity of oil, dispersants and dispersed oil. Unfortunately, much of these data are not comparable because of differing toxicological and analytical methods used, as well as frequent lack of analytical verification of exposures. Recently, a group of federal, state, academic and industry representatives from North America and Europe have been working toward standardizing both biological and analytical methods used to produce acute toxicity estimates of complex mixtures such as oil, dispersants and dispersed oil. This standardization provides guidelines for future investigations to be conducted in a sufficiently rigourous manner that both inter- and intra-laboratory datasets will be comparable, thus providing a more coherent and robust database from which to derive response guidance.