Assessing bioavailability of complex mixtures in contaminated soils: progress made and research needs

Understanding the distribution, behaviour and interactions of complex chemical mixtures is key for providing the evidence necessary to make informed decisions and implement robust remediation strategies. Much of the current risk assessment frameworks applied to manage land contamination are based on total contaminant concentrations and the exposure assessments embedded within them do not explicitly address the partitioning and bioavailability of chemical mixtures. These oversights may contribute to an overestimation of both the eco-toxicological effects of the fractions and the mobility of contaminants. In turn, this may limit the efficacy of risk frameworks to inform targeted and proportionate remediation strategies. In this review we analyse the science surrounding bioavailability, its regulatory inclusion and the challenges of incorporating bioavailability in decision making process. While a number of physical and chemical techniques have proven to be valuable tools for estimating bioavailability of organic and inorganic contaminants in soils, doubts have been cast on its implementation into risk management soil frameworks mainly due to a general disagreement on the interchangeable use of bioavailability and bioaccessibility, and the associated methods which are still not standardised.

This review focuses on the role of biotic and abiotic factors affecting bioavailability along with soil physicochemical properties and contaminant composition. We also included advantages and disadvantages of different extraction techniques and their implications for bioavailability quantitative estimation. In order to move forward the integration of bioavailability into site-specific risk assessments we should (1) account for soil and contaminant physicochemical characteristics and their effect on bioavailability; (2) evaluate receptor's potential exposure and uptake based on mild-extraction; (3) adopt a combined approach where chemical-techniques are used along with biological methods; (4) consider a simplified and cost-effective methodology to apply at regulatory and industry setting; (5) use single-contaminant exposure assessments to inform and predict complex chemical mixture behaviour and bioavailability.