Acute National Ambient Water Quality Criteria. These criteria are applicable regulatory standards. The National Ambient Water Quality Criteria (NAWQC) are calculated by the EPA as half the Final Acute Value (FAV), which is the fifth percentile of the distribution of 48- to 96-hour LC50 values or equivalent median effective concentration (EC50) values for each criterion chemical (Stephan et al. 1985). The acute NAWQC are intended to correspond to concentrations that would cause less than 50% mortality in 5% of exposed populations in a brief exposure. They may be used as a reasonable upper screening benchmark because waste site assessments are concerned with sublethal effects and largely with continuous exposures, rather than the lethal effects and episodic exposures to which the acute NAWQC are applied. The chronic NAWQC are the FAVs divided by the Final Acute-Chronic Ratio (FACR), which is the geometric mean of quotients of at least three LC50/CV ratios from tests of different families of aquatic organisms (Stephan et al. 1985). It is intended to prevent significant toxic effects in chronic exposures and is used as a lower screening benchmark. NAWQC for several metals are functions of water hardness. Values for hardness-dependent metals default to 100 mg CaCO3/L, but equations are provided to obtain values based on site-specific hardness values. Recommended values for metals are expressed in terms of dissolved metal in the water column.
United States Environmental Protection Agency. 2002. National Recommended Water Quality Criteria :2002. Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. November. EPA 822-R-02-047. (Available at http://www.epa.gov/ost/pc/revcom.pdf).