Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2013C00288:reg:2:p2
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2013C00288
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2 (pt 2/15)
Character Range: 1254723–1257834

are multiple potential exposure pathways. However, not all exposure pathways will be relevant for any particular land use. For example, exposure pathways that involve biomagnification are unlikely to be relevant to small industrial sites, as their surface area is limited.
    3. The extent to which the species and ecological functions will be protected—using the preferred method for deriving EILs (that is, species sensitivity distribution (SSD) methods), it is possible to protect a hypothetical percentage of species/ecological functions (e.g. 99% or 95%) by an EIL. The extent of protection (that is, the percentage of species protected) can be changed depending on land use. For example, relatively low protection could be provided for commercial/industrial areas, and high protection for national parks and other high ecological value lands.
The land use-based approach has been adopted by several countries (for example, Germany and Canada). The Canadian soil quality guidelines (CCME 2006, Appendix A3) include four land-use types—agricultural, residential/parkland, commercial and industrial. Each land use has a list of relevant ecological receptors of concern to be included in the derivation of the Canadian SQGs. Furthermore, at industrial and commercial sites, a low level of adverse effects would be expected to occur in less than half of the species in the terrestrial community, as the CCME set the species protection level at 50%. Therefore, each land use type has its own SQG (CCME 2006).

The Australian and New Zealand water quality guidelines (WQGs) (ANZECC and ARMCANZ 2000) include a similar approach, which provides different levels of protection (that is, percentage of species) to aquatic ecosystems depending on how pristine the ecosystem is (that is, their current conservation status).
For pristine and thereby high conservation value ecosystems, slightly to moderately disturbed, and highly disturbed ecosystems, the default levels of protection in Australian aquatic ecosystems are 99% (PC99), 95% (PC95) and 90% (PC90) or 80% (PC80) of species, respectively (ANZECC & ARMCANZ 2000).

The EIL derivation methodology was used to derive a series of SQGs for eight contaminants using three different sets of toxicity data and thus providing three different levels of protection (Schedule B5c). For practicable application, the National Environment Protection (Assessment of Site Contamination) Measure (the NEPM) has adopted a combination of lowest observed effect concentration (LOEC) and 30% effect concentration data (EC30) for derivation of the EILs[1]. For further information about this toxicity data refer to the Glossary and relevant Section.

2.2.1         Levels of protection for specific land uses
For all land uses (urban residential, public open space, commercial, industrial, agricultural, national parks/areas with high ecological value), with the exception of agriculture (see paragraph below on agricultural land), the following ecological receptors are relevant:
    * biota supporting ecological processes, including microorganisms and soil invertebrates
    *