Ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface waters

The article “The ecological risk assessment of atrazine in North American surface waters” 1 is one of the few among the 100 most cited articles in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry to specifically address risk and/or assessment of risk, and it was the first to use probabilistic approaches for a pesticide. As with all science, it was one of many steps in the refinement of procedures for characterizing and assessing risks. Today, we understand that risk must always be expressed as a probability; but, in the general sense, this concept was a late arrival in the area of ecotoxicology. Ecotoxicological risk assessment, as we use it today, traces its scientific origins to risk assessment for the protection of…