‘rbioacc’: an ‘R’-package to analyze toxicokinetic data

Abstract

Abstract‘rbioacc’ is an ‘R’-package dedicated to the analysis of experimental data collected from bioaccumulation tests during which organisms are exposed to a chemical (exposure phase) and then put into a clean media (depuration phase). Internal concentrations are regularly measured over time all along the experiment.‘rbioacc’ provides ready-to-use functions to visualize and fully analyze such data. Under a Bayesian framework, this package fits a generic one-compartment toxicokinetic (TK) model automatically built from the data. It provides TK parameter estimates (appropriate uptake and elimination rates) and bioaccumulation metrics (e.g., BCF, BSAF, BMF). All parameter estimates, bioaccumulation metrics as well as predictions of internal concentrations into organisms are delivered with their uncertainty.Bioaccumulation metrics are primarily provided in support of environmental risk assessment, in full compliance with regulatory requirements required to approve marketing applications of chemical substances.This paper gives brief worked examples of the use of ‘rbioacc’ from data collected through standard bioaccumulation tests, and publicly available within the scientific literature. These examples constitute step-by-step user-guides to analyze any new data set, uploaded in the right format.