27 SETAC Annual Meeting

WHY MONTREAL, WHY THE BELUGA?

Montréal has always been a meeting place. It has been a meeting place for the First Nations and the early French settlers. It still is the meeting place of North America’s French and English cultures. It is now becoming a hub, open to the world’s cultures. As one of the main ports of entry to North America, Montréal has been affected over the last century by human activities.  These activities have led to significant habitat modifications and environmental contamination.

The St. Lawrence Beluga population has been considerably affected by these changes. As a unique, yet endangered population, the Beluga represents a symbol of the fragility of the St. Lawrence River ecosystem. On the other hand, over the last 30 years, significant efforts have been made to understand this unique environment and to find solutions to its degradation. By its downstream position in the Great Lakes - St Lawrence system and its position at the top of food web, the St. Lawrence beluga can be considered as a barometer of our success or failure in managing one of America’s most developed watersheds.

Program:

Metals in the Environment

Metals in Aquatic Food Webs

• Metals in aquatic food webs

Chemistry and Fate issues

• Metals in the Environment: speciation, geochemistry and bioavailability
• Metals in the Environment: Chemistry and Fate Issues
• Metals in the Environment: Regulatory and Risk Concerns
• Metals in the Environment: mechanisms and advancing the BLM
• A Tribute to Rick Playle: The interface of toxicology, physiology, and modeling in improving water quality regulations for metals.
• Mercury Fate and Biogeochemistry
• Chromium in Sediment

Environmental Chemistry

Analytical Methods and apparatus

• Advances in Passive Sampling for Organic Contaminants in Air and Water
• Sensors for Environmental Analysis
• Analytical Determinations in Environmental Matrices

PAHs

• Factors Influencing PAH Exposure and Toxicity

Pesticides

• Fungicides: Analysis, Fate, and Toxicity
• Integrating Research, Risk Assessment and Risk Management of Pesticides
• Evaluation of the Synthetic Pyrethroids in the Aquatic Environment: Regulatory and Risk Concerns

Semi-volatile compounds

• Contaminants in Alpine and Polar Ecosystems

Emerging Pollutants

Emerging Contaminants and Issues

• Fate of EDCs and Pharmaceuticals in the environment
• Biotransformation and Degradation of Brominated Flame Retardants in the Environment
• Fate and transport of emerging contaminants in aqueous systems
• Ecological Fate and Effects of Explosives and Related Compounds
• New title required: Developmental perturbations to fishes by contaminated environments
• Enantionomics-cracking the code of chiral contaminants

Perfluorinated Compounds

• Perfluorinated Substances: Sources, Monitoring, Fate, Behaviour and Toxicology.

Nanoparticles

• Nanotechnology Nexus -- Science, Technology, Risk and Regulation

Contaminated Sediments

Sediment and Soil Evaluations

• Sediment Toxicity Identification Evaluations
• Environmental Forensics in Sediment
• Site-specific Soil Toxicity Evaluations: Practical Constraints of Collecting and Integrating Soil Toxicity Data
• Sediment contamination in rivers and harbors

Environmental Assessment

• Water Quality Assessment (General)*

Bioavailability

• Bioaccumulation potential of explosive compounds.
• Bioavailability Then and Now - A Session Honoring Dr. Peter Landrum
• Bioavailability  recent advancements in analytical tools and models to assess bioavailability of organic pollutants
• Advances in bioaccumulation assessment
• Development of tissue residue benchmarks

Wildlife and Terrestrial Toxicology and ERA

• Wildlife Ecotoxicology: Population level assessments
• Plant availability and toxicity of metals in soils: Challenges for regulatory use
• Terrestrial ecotoxicology in non-temperate soils
• Challenges and Innovations in the Evaluation of Birds in Ecological Risk Assessments
• Wildlife Population Risks from Mercury Exposure
• Linking Contaminated Soil to Human and Ecosystem Health Impacts.

Amphibian and Reptile Ecotoxicology

• Toxicology and risk assessment of reptiles and amphibians

Ecological Risk Assessment

• Risk Assessment : Trials and Tribulations of Limiting Factors and Data Gaps.
• Aquatic macrophytes in ecological risk assessment
• Weight of Evidence in Support of Ecological Risk Assessment: Lines of Evidence
• Soil Ecotoxicology and Risk Assessment
• Current status and application of toxicity reference values (TRVs)in ecological risk assessment.
• Intersecting risks of environmental chemical alterations and biological invasion
• Environmental Changes in Reponse to China's Economic Expansion
• Environmental Contaminants and Municipalities A Different Set of Challenges
• Effects of Transient Stressor Exposures on Aquatic Organisms
• Bivalve molluscs and mussels as sentinel organisms
• Catastrophe: The Wild Card in Ecological Risk Assessment

Marine and Estuarine Ecosystems

• Environmental Contaminants in Marine Mammals
• Exposure of beluga whale to contaminants and toxic effects
• POPs in Estuarine Environments: Observations in Water, Sediments and Biota

Ecotoxicology

• Wildlife and Terrestrial Toxicology (General)*
• Aquatic Toxicology (General)*

Immunotoxicity/ endocrine disruptors

• The immune system as a target for the toxic action of pollutants

Omics

• Predicting ecological effects of pollutants from biomarkers and omic responses
• Modern Biological Approaches to Medaka/Zebrafish Toxicology

Biomarkers

• Invertebrate biomarkers: Applications and Limitations in the assessment of aquatic pollution
• Biotransformation and oxidative stress response in aquatic organisms
• Cellular, Organismal and Population Biomarkers Used In Wildlife Toxicology
• Environmental Monitoring of DNA Damage

Ecotoxicology

• Assessing Ecosystem Services and Benefits
• Green Chemicals and Environmental Toxicity: The good, the bad, and the ugly
• Putting ecology back into ecological risk assessments: the potential of modelling
• Effect of environmental/climatic changes on the risk of toxic effects in aquatic organisms
• Evaluating Toxicological Endpoints in Field Populations Using Non-Lethal Methods
• Toxicity of Complex Mixtures
• Short Term Toxicity Testing from Tweaking to Brave New World

Life-cycle Assessment

• LCA and policy development in governments and business
• Life cycle thinking applied to forestry, agricultural, mining, fisheries and petroleum products
• Regionalization of LCA; methodologies to answer different concerns
• LCA: analytical tools, methods and applications
• Correlation in cross over impacts such as climate change on ecological toxicity and human health
• Consumers and social aspects in sustainability
• Case studies on application of life cycle approaches for improved decision making
• LCA: risk and benefits for technology development
• LCA and HERA: Linkages, Lessons and Future Directions

Environmental Policy and Management

• Active Ingedients, Formulated Products or Tank Mixes: What Should Be Regulated?
• Narrowing the Knowledge Gap between the Science-Savvy and the Science-Illiterate
• Research Needs for Water Quality Protection in Regulatory Programs: regional and national trends
• Global Chemical and Product Classification and Labeling Systems

Quantitative tools for assessing ecotoxicology data

• Assessing the Impact of Uncertainty on Decisions
• The Future of Environmental Statistics and Ecological Modeling
• Computational Systems Biology and Ecotoxicology

Remediation/Restoration

• Risk Mitigation Tools: Validation and Novel Ideas
• Innovative Planning and Quality Oversight for the Characterization of Complex Sediment Investigations
• Managing Impaired Aquatic Ecosystems: Defining Problems and Identifying Solutions
• Integrating Science and Assessment in Environmental Management
• Remediation and bioremediation of sediments
• Remediation: case studies
• Bioremediation (excluding sediments)

Interactive Platform

• Behavioural endpoints in ecotoxicology
• Analysis of biominerals as a proxy for understanding environmental change and the management of aquatic ecosystems
• Bioavailibility and effects of PAHs derived from aluminium smelter operations
• SETAC Workshop on Veterinary Medicines in the Environment
• Problem formulation for risk assessment
• Animal Alternatives in Ecotoxicology
• Advances in bioaccumulation assessment
• Sustainable Development*