ECO-SSL

The Ecological Soil Screening Level (Eco-SSL) derivation process represents the collaborative effort of a multi-stakeholder workgroup consisting of federal, state, consulting, industry and academic participants led by the U.S. EPA, Office of Emergency and Remedial Response. It is emphasized that the Eco-SSLs are soil screening numbers, and as such are not appropriate for use as cleanup levels. Screening ecotoxicity values are derived to avoid underestimating risk. Requiring a cleanup based solely on Eco-SSL values would not be technically defensible.

The Eco-SSL web site provides an overview of the contaminant. Separate discussion are provided for each receptor group including a comprehensive list of literature evaluated under the effort, and a summary of data used in deriving Eco-SSL values. For each chemical, Eco-SSL documents are provided in a PDF format which requires the Acrobat Reader. For some documents HTML versions are available with linkages to the toxicity data records within the U.S. EPA’s ECOTOX database.