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Department of Climate Change, Energy, Enviroment and Water

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  5. Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard - IChEMS
  6. Australian Environmental Criteria for Persistent, Bioaccumulative and/or Toxic Chemicals

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Australian Environmental Criteria for Persistent, Bioaccumulative and/or Toxic Chemicals

Version 1, October 2022

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Australian Environmental Criteria for Persistent, Bioaccumulative and/or Toxic Chemicals (PDF 1.0 MB)

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For the purposes of the decision-making principles made under section 23 of Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management (Register) Act 2021, the terms:

Persistent means a chemical that meets the indicators and/or numerical thresholds for positive hazard categorisation for the hazard characteristic “Persistence” (Item 1) in Table 1, below.

Bioaccumulative means a chemical that meets the indicators and/or numerical thresholds for positive hazard categorisation for the hazard characteristic “Bioaccumulation” (Item 2) in Table 1, below.

Toxic means a chemical that meets the indicators and/or numerical thresholds for positive hazard categorisation for the hazard characteristic “Toxicity” (Item 3) in Table 1, below.

A chemical is “a PBT” chemical when it is categorised as persistent, and bioaccumulative, and toxic using the criteria in Table 1.

Table 1: The Australian Criteria for Persistent, Bioaccumulative and/or Toxic Chemicals are indicators used to categorise Persistence, Bioaccumulation and Toxicity characteristics of organic chemicals.
Item Hazard characteristic Environmental medium (or compartment or trophic level) Indicators and numerical thresholds for positive hazard categorisation and considering environmental relevance
1 Persistence Air Half-life (T½) ≥ 2 days
Water Half-life (T½) ≥ 60 days
Soil Half-life (T½) ≥ 6 months
Sediment Half-life (T½) ≥ 6 months
2 Bioaccumulation Aquatic BAF ≥ 2000 or BCF ≥ 2000 or
log Kow ≥ 4.2 (if BAF and BCF are not available)
Terrestrial log Koa > 6 and log Kow ≥ 2
Food-chain bioaccumulation potential BMF > 1
3 Toxicity Aquatic – Acute  
Fish 96 h LC50 ≤ 1 mg/L and/or
Invertebrates 48 h EC50 ≤ 1 mg/L and/or
Algae or other aquatic plants 72 or 96 h ErC50 ≤ 1 mg/L
___________________  
Aquatic – Chronic  
Fish Chronic NOEC or ECx ≤ 0.1 mg/L and/or
Invertebrates Chronic NOEC or ECx ≤ 0.1 mg/L and/or
Algae or other aquatic plants Chronic NOEC or ECx ≤ 0.1 mg/L

BCF = bioconcentration factor; BAF = bioaccumulation factor; Kow = n-octanol/water partition coefficient; Koa = octanol/air partition coefficient; BMF = biomagnification factor; LC50 = concentration lethal to 50% of the population; E(r)C50(x) = concentration that has adverse effects to 50% of the population (or growth rate for algae); NOEC = No Observable Effect Concentration.

For the purposes of the Australian Environmental Criteria for Persistent, Bioaccumulative and/or Toxic Chemicals, half-life (T½), is the time taken for half of a substance to degrade or transform in the specified compartment, measured in days or months.

Note: These are the general criteria and may not be directly applicable to difficult to test substances such as some surfactants and poorly soluble substances. These criteria are not directly applicable to metals and other inorganic chemicals. The Commonwealth risk assessment will identify and justify the PBT characteristics of the chemical.

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Last updated: 27 October 2022

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