The project provides information that can be used in preliminary land use-based risk assessments for pesticides potentially used in the St. Johns River watershed, and for a broad suite of contaminant types in the lower Columbia River watershed of Oregon and Washington states, U.S.A.

Human-use pharmaceutical compounds were analyzed at the U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Quality Laboratory, Denver, Colorado, in wadeable streams in 4 Regional Stream Quality Assessments: Northeast (NESQA), Southeast (SESQA), Pacific Northwest (PNSQA) and California (CSQA). Multiple (with few exceptions) samplings occurred at each site, during base flow, between 2014 and 2017. Sites were located in the headwaters of perennial, wadeable streams in urban and agricultural watersheds. Site selection and methodology for each assessment can be found in Van Meter and others (2015), Sheibley and others (2015), Van Meter and others (2017), Coles and others (2016), Van Meter and others (2016), Journey and others (2015), and Van Meter and others (2014).

Human-use pharmaceutical compounds were analyzed at the U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Quality Laboratory, Denver, Colorado, in wadeable streams in 4 Regional Stream Quality Assessments: Northeast (NESQA), Southeast (SESQA), Pacific Northwest (PNSQA) and California (CSQA). Multiple (with few exceptions) samplings occurred at each site, during base flow, between 2014 and 2017. Sites were located in the headwaters of perennial, wadeable streams in urban and agricultural watersheds. Site selection and methodology for each assessment can be found in Van Meter and others (2015), Sheibley and others (2015), Van Meter and others (2017), Coles and others (2016), Van Meter and others (2016), Journey and others (2015), and Van Meter and others (2014).

The Ecotox Program is at the forefront, nationally and internationally, of targeted research to characterize the impacts of petroleum hydrocarbons on NOAA trust resources, particularly fish early life stages. This work is extending lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, through the Cosco Busan spill in San Francisco Bay, to an array of current and intensive activities associated with the Deepwater Horizon natural resource damage assessment in the Gulf of Mexico. This research has been particularly influential in recent years (PNAS papers in 2011 and 2012), with major Deepwater papers forthcoming in 2012 and 2013. Funding has come from NOS/ORR, the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, the Prince William Sound Regional Citizen's Advisory Council, the San Francisco Estuary Institute, and other sources. Ecotox is currently developing new tools to assess PAH exposure and toxicity in fish and other animals, with national applicability - e.g., in advance of anticipated oil drilling in the Arctic, beginning in the summer of 2012. 3 year study of effects of the Cosco Busan oil spill. Morphology, heart rate, hatching rate data of Pacific herring planted at oil and reference sites and correlating herring spawns at these sites. This work supports NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP).