Soil-specific ecological risk thresholds for tetracycline derived from multi-trophic toxicity data and species sensitivity distribution.

A species sensitivity distribution for tetracycline in agricultural soils estimates an HC5 of 1.646 mg/kg (95% CI 0.44–6.11) from multi-trophic toxicity data.

• Why it matters: Soil-specific ecological risk thresholds for tetracycline are poorly defined because terrestrial toxicity data are limited, often forcing reliance on aquatic data or aquatic-to-soil extrapolation.
• What they did: Soil toxicity assays tested Chinese flowering cabbage, pak choi cultivars, lettuce, earthworms, springtails, and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, deriving EC10 ranges (plants 1.11–224.73 mg/kg; soil invertebrates 6.78–127.48 mg/kg) and fitting an SSD with normal distribution (P > 0.05; RMSE = 0.060).
• The result: The fitted SSD produced an HC5 of 1.646 mg/kg and, using an assessment factor of 5, a predicted no-effect concentration for soil (PNEC soil) of 0.3292 mg/kg, enabling soil-specific risk assessment references.

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