Emerging Risks of Chemicals in the Environment (ERCITE)

Vision

The Emerging Risks of Chemicals in the Environment programme aims to conduct research to predict how the environment and its functioning will respond to chemical exposure that regulators or industry are currently facing or might face in the future in the UK. The anticipated high level outcome is a transformation in the way chemical risk assessment is considered; to move towards an ecosystems approach with greater ecological relevance.

Objectives

This research programme will deliver fundamental process understanding underpinning chemical behaviour and impact in the environment and a predictive capability to support chemicals management, in three interlinked research questions:

• What are the impacts of chemicals on populations, ecosystems and ecosystem services?
• What are the risks from chemical mixtures?
• How important are chemical stressors in relation to other stressors?

Research will focus on addressing issues that regulators or industry are currently facing or might face in the future and concerning chemicals whose environmental impacts have yet to be explored.

Projects

ERCITE is comprised of three projects:

1. ChemPop Project: Does the discharge of chemicals to the environment harm wildlife populations

   UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; Project Lead: Prof. Andrew Johnson; £1.9 M

2. Chemical Mixtures Project: Classic and temporal mixture synergisms in terrestrial ecosystems: Prevalence, mechanisms and impacts

   UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; Project Lead: Dr David Spurgeon; £2.4 M

3. Ecosystems Project: A novel framework for predicting emerging chemical stressor impacts in complex ecosystems

   Imperial College London and University of Essex; Project Lead: Prof. Guy Woodward; £2.5 M