ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT OF ATRAZINE IN NORTH AMERICAN SURFACE WATERS

摘要

The article "The ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface waters" [1] is one of the few among the 100 most cited articles in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry to specifically address risk and/or assessment of risk, and it was the first to use probabilistic approaches for a pesticide. As with all science, it was one of many steps in the refinement of procedures for characterizing and assessing risks. Today, we understand that risk must always be expressed as a probability; but, in the general sense, this concept was a late arrival in the area of ecotoxicology. Ecotoxicological risk assessment, as we use it today, traces its scientific origins to risk assessment for the protection of human health, but even that was a relatively recent adoption. Although humans have faced risks since the dawn of society, risk assessment was purely empirical, descriptive, and anecdotal. The concept of risk in mathematical terms became possible only though the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numbering system by Western society approximately 800 years ago [2].