Vision & strategy: Predictive ecotoxicology in the 21st century

In the 20th century, predicting ecological risk from the use of certain chemicals relied on testing programs that directly measured adverse outcomes (death, disease, reproductive failure, or developmental dysfunction) using in vivo toxicity tests.Extrapolation from these tests-from one species to another or from controlled laboratory tests to uncontrolled real-world environments-was based on largely conservative assumptions or arbitrary uncertainty factors.The result?Costly, time-consuming, unfocused, and contentious assessments that often failed to inspire public confidence in related regulatory and policy decisions.