Work

Linking micropollutant mixtures and macroinvertebrate ecological health using AI-based toxicity predictions

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This study investigates how micropollutant mixtures affect the ecological health of benthic macroinvertebrate communities by combining ecotoxicological predictions with macroinvertebrates and water chemistry data. Using the AI-based model TRIDENT, we predicted the toxicity (EC 10 ) of 559 micropollutants. Substances were grouped according to their EC 10 through a cluster analysis. The micropollutants’ effects on the ecological health, represented by the multimetric index, was evaluated in 207 sampling sites with beta regressions using two approaches to assess the toxic pressure. The first model considered the maximum toxic pressure of the entire water sample as the single explanatory variable. The second model incorporated the maximum toxic pressure of every cluster as separate explanatory variables, and translated better the effects of pollution on the multimetric index (pseudo R-squared = 0.28) compared to the other model (pseudo R-squared = 0.15). Additionally, we identified substances that drove the toxic pressure of our samples. Another beta regression showed that a large amount of the communities’ health (pseudo R-squared = 0.24) could be explained by four indicator substances alone. Our findings reveal that micropollutant contamination plays a key role in the degradation of aquatic ecosystems, and that summarizing a mixture of micropollutants to a single-substance metric underestimates this contribution. • Toxic mixtures strongly contribute to the degradation of the ecological health. • The most toxic substances are not necessarily the main drivers. • Single-substance metrics do not depict mixture effects well. • Both point source and diffuse source pollution impact the ecological health. • Four substances could serve as indicators of chemical pressure.

Source: Journal of Hazardous Materials

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.140137

Authors: Ariane Moulinec, Fabian G. Weichert, Henner Hollert, Sarah Johann, Andrea Sundermann

Institutions: Goethe University Frankfurt, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt/M, Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics, Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Hessen

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Toxicology and Ecotoxicology

Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Clean water and sanitation, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,340