AbstractAn essential consideration when imposing a requirement for, or evaluating the results generated by, effluent toxicity tests in the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program is the amount of uncertainty in the measured test end point Variability in effluent toxicity test results is explored by examining round‐robin test data withDaphnia magna, fathead minnows, andCertodaphnia dubiaas test organisms Inter and intralaboratory percentages of survival of the test organisms are examined by using plots, descriptive statistics, and logistic regression models The results of the analyses demonstrate that the variation in survival is large (0‐100 for some test solutions) In addition, the amount of variability is shown to be a function of the toxicity of the test solution The variability in survival is shown to be larger than the variability associated with the LC50 (a model‐based end point) The large variability in effluent toxicity tests can have significant implications for the interpretation of toxicity test results used to measure compliance with effluent toxicity
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