Bioavailability processes are essential for assessing environmental risk, environmental health, and decision making in environmental management. This practical guide on environmental bioavailability explains the importance of its use and includes specific methods for testing bioavailability of pollutants in water (fresh water and seawater), soils, and sediments. Detailed methods and techniques are given to measure and assess bioavailability using biotic methods, abiotic methods, and modeling. A case study for each approach will help environmental researchers and practitioners understand the applications of bioavailability in field and laboratory.

Features

• Provides information on the importance of environmental bioavailability of pollutants.
• Explains in a “how-to” manner the use of bioavailability in environmental risk assessment and environmental management decision making.
• Includes areas of applicability, optimum conditions, and pros and cons for each method.
• Summarizes state-of-the-art in modeling environmental bioavailability and discusses current best practices.
• Includes case studies illustrating the assessment of bioavailability using different approaches.

This handbook is intended for professionals, researchers, academics, environmental practitioners, and policy makers working in the areas of environmental risk assessment, environmental health, environmental management, sustainability, and related fields. It is also an excellent resource for students who are studying in any of these fields and looking for a foundational text on environmental bioavailability.

Xiaokai Zhang is an associate professor at the School of Environment and Civil Engineering, Jiangnan University in China. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in UK focused on bioavailability in environmental risk and impact assessment and he continues to work on bioavailability-based risk and environmental management. His research has been published in several book chapters and in notable environmental science journals including Water Research, Environmental Pollution, Science of The Total Environment, and Chemosphere, with some works rated as highly cited papers.

Mona Wells is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist specialized in Environmental Impact Assessment, Environmental Risk Assessment, and Environmental Management. Her roles have included posts in different locales internationally as an academic and as an environmental practitioner, on projects spanning a broad portfolio including technical project work, research, commercialization, program development, policy advisement, science communication, public consultation, pedagogical development, and continuous improvement.