Following the special session held at the 14th SETAC LA Congress in 2021, which was entitled “Evaluation of Effluents in Latin America”, a regional workshop was organized: “Effluent Ecotoxicity – Preparing the foundations for a future regulation in Latin America”. The event was organized by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry – Latin America (SETAC LA), in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from November 29 to December 2, 2022.
The Workshop had the objective of generating a space to share different perspectives from the academic, industrial, and governmental sectors of Latin American countries on environmental regulations related to the control of effluent toxicity. Thus, the idea was to share the Brazilian experience, since it has already implemented the ecotoxicity assessment of effluent discharges in its regulatory frameworks.
To this occasion, Dr. Alexandre Arenzon from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul-Brazil offered a short course with the basic concepts of Ecotoxicology as well as a presentation on the “Overview of the use of ecotoxicological parameters in the Brazilian regulatory system”, where attention was drawn to the importance of ecotoxicological knowledge to avoid problems in the interpretation of Brazilian environmental legislation.
Dr. Alexandre Arenzon also presented his point of view on “Approaches for the ecotoxicological evaluation of effluents – best available technologies or based on Risk Assessment”. In this session, he presented a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches to defining maximum limits of toxicity in discharges, as well as a third option.
This workshop was the starting point for the process. In the following 4 days of the event, there was a great set of presentations and discussions. Now all the information must be processed, thought through, and discussed again, considering the objectives of the effluents monitoring and the structures available in each country.