Research Product

Use of toxicity test data for population-level risk assessment was investigated as follows: (1) the influence of life history characteristics of menhaden and striped bass on vulnerability of contaminant-induced stress, (2) the importance of test data availability, and (3) the influence of exploitation intensity. Menhaden and striped bass differed in terms of their capacity to sustain the same level of contaminant-induced mortality. Changes in exploitation intensity affect the responses of both populations to the same level of additional contaminant-induced mortality. However, the quantitative effects of both factors were small compared to the uncertainty associated with estimating long-term effects from short-term tests or QSARs.