Hazard property hp 14 'ecotoxic' : correspondence of classification of waste by the european list of waste, by chemical composition and by an ecotoxicological test battery

The Member States of the European Union have in 2014 updated the list of waste and defined the 15 hazard properties (HP) of wastes except for HP14 ‘Ecotoxic’. Four calculation methods for HP 14 are assessed till June 2015 in a Call for Tenders of the Directorate General of the Environment of the European Commission. This paper is a contribution to the assessment of these 4 calculation methods, with the presentation of results of a 5th one, using “extended M-factors”. Available data of 33 samples from different origin were used. They were classified by the LoW: 16 hazardous (H), 7 non-hazardous (NH), and 10 mirror entries (H or NH). The LoW is taken as a reference method. The concordance for one calculation method is established by the number of waste with identical classification by the considered calculation method and the LoW (H/H, NH/NH). The discordance is established as well, and the case where the waste is classified “H” in the LoW and “NH” by calculation (under-estimation of the hazard) will be considered. Method 2 with extensive M-factors (the 5th one) matches best with the European list of waste (78% concordant H and non-H by LoW, and 13% discordant for H waste by LoW). It classifies safely waste containing substances with high ecotoxicity. Methods 1 and 3 have nearly as good matching (74% concordant H and non-H by LoW, and 6% and 13% respectively discordant for H waste by LoW), but do not classify safely waste containing substances with high ecotoxicity. Method 2 with M-factors limited to the M-factors published in the CLP has insufficient concordance (61% concordant H and non-H by LoW, and 50% discordant for H waste by LoW). As the same method with extended M-factors gives the best performance, the lower performance is due to the limitation of the M-factor. Method 4 is divergent (57% concordant H and non-H by LoW, and 56% discordant for H waste by LoW). The results of a European battery of ecotoxicological tests will be presented at the Conference