Biological effects
More than 100,000 known man-made chemicals are present in the
marine environment.
It is not feasible to measure all of them directly and
interaction between them makes it very difficult to predict their
impact - either individually or as mixtures - on marine
species. To address this issue we offer "biological effect"
techniques that provide a cost-effective service to assess the
potential of a chemical to cause adverse health effects in the
marine environment.
A biological effect may be defined as:
the response of an organism (ranging
from the expression of a protein to the onset of a disease) or a
population or community to changes in its environment, man-made or
natural.
Our use of biological effect techniques follows internationally
accepted methodologies and criteria. Also, there must be a process
for integrating chemical and biological effect relationships. This
provides the best evidence about the current health status of
the marine environment (e.g., is it getting better or worse?) to
environmental managers and stakeholders.
In addition, we conduct a wide range of research and monitoring
using sentinel species such as mussels,
flatfish and stickleback.
Please contact laboratoryservices@cefas.co.uk
for further information.