Calcium chloride

Short-term toxicity to aquatic invertebrates

Description of key information

Twelve reliable studies (K2) are available fulfilling overall 16 study records covering different species: 9 crustacean, 2 worms, 1 mollusc and 3 aquatic insects.

Only two studies conducted according to international or national guidelines exposing Daphnia magna (de Groot and Groeneveld 1998) and Ceriodaphnia sp. (Mount et al., 1997) for 48 h to the test item are available. Results indicated estimated EC50s of 2400 mg/L for Daphnia magna and 1830 mg/L for Ceriodaphnia sp. However, the lowest EC50 of 1062 mg/L for crustacean was found in another valid study (Khangarot and Ray 1989), which however was not conducted by a standard method and so deemed less reliable than the aforementioned studies. Two studies reporting the toxicity of the test material to worm, Tubifex tubifex at 96 h (Khangarot, 1991) and Caenorhabditis elegans at 24h (Tatara et al. 1997), showed respectively the lowest and the highest EC50 among all the short-term invertebrates’ studies.

Estimated EC50(96h) for T. tubifex was 780 mg/L and for Caenorhabditis elegans 44400 mg/L. However, these studies were not conducted by standard guidelines and lacked in detail to allow a detailed evaluation of the reliability. Overall, the acute toxicity of reliable K2 studies with invertebrates showed LC50 or EC50 values in the range of 780-44400 mg/L.  

There were some K3 studies (6) outside the aforementioned range, however as the quality of these studies could not be verified these were not considered reliable enough for risk assessment purposes.

In conclusion, the short-term invertebrate study selected for risk assessment purposes was the EC50 of 2400 mg/L determined in the most reliable Daphnia magna study performed.

 

Key value for chemical safety assessment

Fresh water invertebrates

Fresh water invertebrates

Effect concentration:

2 400 mg/L