Basic concepts in ecotoxicology, types of toxic pollutants and routes of entry, inorganic and organic pollutants, organometal compounds, nanoparticles, mechanistic basis of ecotoxicology.

Origin of pollutants, fate and distribution of pollutants in the environment including land and water, environmental persistence, biodegradability, environmental factors affecting toxicity, biological transformations, bioaccumulation and bioavailability.

Types of toxicity, processes of uptake, acute, chronic, lethal, sub-lethal and cumulative effects, biochemical, physiological, behavioural and morphological reactions to pollution, teratogenesis, mutagenesis and carcinogenesis, principles of dose-response, tolerance and regulation, reactions to pollution stress, endocrine disruption.

Regulatory requirements and EU legislation, principles of environmental risk, quantification of the effects of risk factors, the effects of pollutants and the methods used to assess these effects at different organisational levels, ecosystem, community, population, whole organism, tissue, cellular and subcellular, biomarkers used to monitor pollutant effects, in vivo and in vitro bioassays, methods of measuring the effects of pollution, measuring toxicity using test organisms; bacteria, algae, Daphnia, Artemia, bivalves, fish and crustaceans, LC50, EC50, NOEC, toxicity curves, lethal dose studies, behavioural change, morphological change, growth and development, field studies, mesocosms.

Toxicity tests in the laboratory using standard test algae, determination of the LC50 of a pollutant using test organism e.g. Artemia/Daphnia, effect of a pollutant on the osmoregulatory ability of the lugworm, effects of a a heavy metal pollutant in sediments on the burrowing behaviour of marine bivalves, measurement of the biodegradability of a pollutant. Characterisation of plastic waste by fourier transform IR spectroscopy