Research Status of Water Quality Criteria and Standards and Analysis on the Transformation Methods

Under the vision of development for the new era,China has entered a stage of high-quality economic development and an important window period in which we have the conditions and ability to address the prominent issue of economic development and ecological protection in a coordinated way.However,all kinds of environmental benchmark values in China are lacking and need to be constantly supplemented and improved.Therefore,exploring and putting forward a simple and efficient method for the transformation of environmental criteria into environmental standards is an important basis for the rapid establishment of relevant environmental criteria system and the effective promotion of the development of environmental standards system towards a scientific and reasonable direction.In this paper,the water environment is taken as the research object.By analyzing the research progress of environmental criteria and standards at home and abroad,and the foreign method of transforming environmental criteria into environmental standards,combined with the problems faced in the process of transforming environmental criteria into environmental standards in China,an effective method to transform China's environmental criteria into environmental standards is analyzed.After analysis and comparison,it is found that the pollution reduction accounting method could achieve their simple and efficient conversion.Under the premise of obtaining environmental criteria for certain pollutants,environmental criteria for certain pollutants could be obtained by distributing pollutants reduction costs,and accounting economic benefits after reaching standard,thus obtaining the environmental standard of this type of pollutant,which provides reference to determine the environmental standard limits of such pollutants.

Human health ambient water quality criteria for 13 heavy metals and health risk assessment in Taihu Lake

Heavy metals are widely concerning because of their toxicity,persistence,non-degradation and bioaccumulation ability.Iluman health ambient water quality criteria(AWQC)are specific levels of chemicals that can occur in water without harming human health.At present,most countries do not consider the effects of aquatic vegetables in deriving human health AWQC.Therefore,the intake of aquatic vegetables(Brasenia schreberi)was added to the derivation of human health AWQC and a health risk assessment for 13 heavy metals in Taihu Lake.The human health AWQC(consumption of water,fish and aquatic vegetables)values of 13 heavy metals ranged from 0.04(Cd)to 710.87μg/L(Sn),and the intake of B.schreberi had a very significant effect on the human health AWQC for Cu,with a more than 62-fold difference.The hazard quotients of As(2.8),Cd(1.6),Cr(1.4)and Cu(4.86)were higher than the safe level(HQ=1),indicating that As,Cd,Cr and Cu in Taihu Lake posed a significant health risk.Sensitivity analysis showed that the contribution rate of B.schreberi intake to the human health risk from Cu was 91.6%,and all results indicated that the risk of Cu in B.schreberi to human health should be of particular concern.This study adds the consideration of aquatic vegetable consumption to the traditional method of human health AWQC derivation and risk assessments for the first time,and this approach can promote the development of risk assessments and water quality criteria.

Developing sediment quality criteria for heavy metal pollution in the Le An River with equilibrium partitioning approach

Equilibrium partitioning(EqP) approach was selected to establish the sediment quality criteria(SQC) in the Le An River near Dexing Copper Mine. Both freshwater quality criteria (WQC) for some heavy metals regulated by USEPA and national quality standards of surface water recommended by CNEPA were used as protective levels of aquatic organisms in this study. Meanwhile, the partitioning coefficients were derived directly from measured data. Comparison between SQC in this region and concentrations of contaminants in situ clearly indicated the distribution characteristics of metal contamination along the river. And the results also illustrated that measures of some metals exceeded their SQC levels in different degree, especially Cu.

Deriving freshwater quality criteria of sulphocyanic sodium for the protection of aquatic life in China

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Sediment quality criteria for heavy metal pollution in the Le An River with triad approach

In this study, integrative traid was used to sediment quality in the Le An River, which has been strongly contaminated by large amount of Cu, Pb, Zn,Cd, As and Cr discharging from mining activities. All available data collected from chemical analyses,toxic tests and field survey on benthic macroinvertebrates were transformed into ratio to reference(RTR) and relevant scales.The responses of receiving environment to mining impacts were illustrated by traid graphs. Traid results indicated that a sectional distribution pattern existed from upstream to downstream:(a) relative clean upstream;(b) serious contaminated middle stream;(c) gradual recovery downstream. This situation was closely related with local mining activities, which caused obvious degradation of sediment quality in some sections, therefore, remediation was required urgently.

Determination of water environment standards based on water quality criteria in China:Limitations and feasibilities

There is a need to formulate water environment standards（WESs） from the current water quality criteria（WQC） in China.To this end,we briefly summarize typical mechanisms applied in several countries with longer histories of developing WESs,and three limitations to formulating WESs in China were identified.After analyzing the feasibility factors including economic development,scientific support capability and environmental policies,we realized that China is still not ready for a complete change from its current nation-wide unified WES system to a local-standard-based system.Thus,we proposed a framework for transformation from WQC to WESs in China.The framework consists of three parts,including responsibilities,processes and policies.The responsibilities include research authorization,development of guidelines,and collection of information,at both national and local levels;the processes include four steps and an impact factor system to establish water quality standards;and the policies include seven specific proposals.

The Derivation of Nutrient Criteria for the Adjacent Waters of Yellow River Estuary in China

Ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin are becoming part of the national strategy in recent years.The Yellow River Estuary has been seriously affected by human activities.Especially,it has been severely polluted by the nitrogen and phosphorus from land sources,which have caused serious eutrophication and harmful algal blooms.Nutrient criteria,however,was not developed for the Yellow River Estuary,which hindered nutrient management measures and eutrophication risk assessment in this key ecological function zone of China.Based on field data during 2004-2019,we adopted the frequency distribution method,correlation analysis,Linear Regression Model(LRM),Classification and Regression Tree(CART)and Nonparametric Changepoint Analysis(nCPA)methods to establish the nutrient criteria for the adjacent waters of Yellow River Estuary.The water quality criteria of dissolved inorganic nitrogen(DIN)and soluble reactive phosphorus(SRP)are recommended as 244.0μg L^(−1) and 22.4μg L^(−1),respectively.It is hoped that the results will provide scientific basis for the formulation of nutrient standards in this important estuary of China.