Oral Presentation Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Australasia 2023

CREED – A framework to evaluate the reliability and relevance of measured chemical data in the environment (#154)

Andrew J Harford 1 , Jenny Stauber 2 , Graham Merrington 3 , Charles Peck 4 , Lisa Nowell 5
  1. Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Eaton, NT, Australia
  2. Environment, CSIRO, Lucas Height, NSW
  3. WCA environment, Oxfordshire, UK
  4. Office of Pesticide Programs, U.S, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington DC, USA
  5. U.S. Geological Survey, Sacramento, California, USA

Environmental chemical measurements serve various purposes, from simple environmental status reporting to legally binding compliance monitoring and complex risk assessments. “Exposure” data often receive only cursory assessment by practitioners compared to “effects” (ecotoxicity) data, for which there are prescriptive evaluation frameworks. However, exposure dataset evaluations may also suffer inconsistencies from expert judgments, which introduce bias and can lead to erroneous or ambiguous conclusions. Hence, exposure data should be evaluated for reliability and relevance. Reliability refers to the inherent quality of a dataset and is based on sample collection methods, chemical analysis methods, data processing, and statistics. Relevance refers to the degree of suitability or appropriateness of a dataset to address a specific purpose.

Following a SETAC Technical Workshop in Copenhagen in May 2022, CREED (Criteria for Reporting and Evaluating Exposure Datasets) was developed as a framework for assessing reliability and relevance of environmental exposure data to improve the transparency and consistency with which exposure data are evaluated regarding their usability in environmental assessments. The CREED framework, developed and tested by 30 additional practitioners globally, includes:

  1. A purpose statement clearly describing how the dataset is proposed to be used;
  2. Gateway criteria – minimum requirements that a dataset or study must meet to warrant CREED evaluation.
  3. Reliability criteria – 19 criteria across six classes: media, spatial, temporal, analytical, data handling and statistics, and supporting parameters;
  4. Relevance criteria – 11 criteria across the same six classes listed in item 3;
  5. Data usability score and purpose-specific report card for two levels: silver and gold.

 This presentation will describe the development of CREED and illustrate CREED with case studies.