This talk will provide background on the emerging concern around UV filters (UVFs) and their potential impacts to coral reefs, provide an overview of the state of the science, and discuss where advancements need to be made for a defensible environmental risk assessment. EPA’s Office of Research and Development is working with scientists across sectors to communicate data needs for defensible analyses of potential risks of UVFs in marine, estuarine, and freshwater ecosystems. In further efforts to advance the science, researchers in ORD’s Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling are evaluating effects of UVFs on marine and estuarine species, including novel methods development that assess coral sensitivity to UVFs and advances in analytical chemistry of these challenging compounds. These steps demonstrate EPA’s responsiveness to the NASEM 2022 report “Review of Fate, Exposure, and Effects of Sunscreens in Aquatic Environments and Implications for Sunscreen Usage and Human Health”, while advancing the science and data needs to protect coral reefs and other at-risk aquatic communities from UVFs.
Sandy Raimondo, PhD, EPA Office of Research and Development
Dr. Sandy Raimondo is a Senior Research Ecologist with ORD’s Gulf Ecosystem Measurement and Modeling Division in Gulf Breeze Florida. She has worked with EPA’s ecological risk assessors across program offices and regions for over 20 years to develop and implement methods that reduce uncertainty in chemical hazard assessments. She is EPA’s lead on multi-sector outreach for UVFs and is a co-lead on ORD’s research efforts to evaluate the sensitivity of marine and estuarine organisms to UVFs.