**Author details**

*Assessment and Management of Radioactive and Electronic Wastes*

resources [74]. *Artemia* is such a versatile creature that it is a paradigmatic model having not only scientific research values but also the ability to satisfy human needs, owing to its unique life traits including a well-developed adaptability to high salinity conditions as well as easy handling under laboratory conditions, which have been successfully applied to marine fish farming that uses *Artemia* nauplii as food for fish larvae. However, the booming marine fish farming activity worldwide is likely to give rise to some risks in terms of the high genetic divergence between different *Artemia* species. Exploitation of new *Artemia* cyst harvesting sites and introduction of an exotic species linked to traits relevant to aquaculture can drive other local genotypes to extinction. Risk assessment and evaluation of management decisions in exploited resources, for instance, the availability of genetic information as well as molecular tools for follow-up gene pool monitoring, therefore, become quite necessary in order to maintain biodiversity. Gene banks established from cysts collected from various sites guarantee population persistence while proceeding with management affairs. Taking into account the simple constitution of hypersaline habitats, the evaluation of population/species persistence with *Artemia* can be modeled in laboratories and further extrapolated to other species, offering some of the aspects regarding rational aquatic resource utilization and, more importantly, biodiversity preservation.

After more than five decades of use in ecotoxicology, *Artemia* spp. have demonstrated its suitability for use in pre-screening of toxic agents [10]; thus, it seems that *Artemia* sp. endpoints may be used as a toxicity testing method to meet market demand, even though there are no internationally standardized toxicity testing

Biomarkers and teratogenicity are the less popular endpoints used in short-term toxicity tests because of their limited sensitivity. However, behavioral endpoints, especially swimming inhibition, seem to have a wider application potential in the future with the development of computer technology. Both continuous and intermittent observations of single or groups of living organisms can be studied by image and video analysis. Hatching rate and acute mortality are the most commonly used endpoints in the standardization process at a different level. Usually, hatching rate (48 h static test) was intercalibrated at the Italian level [69], while acute mortality (24 h static test) was intercalibrated based on the available standard [40] at the Italian [69] as well as the European level [72]. Both provided data on CuSO4 as a reference toxicant. Among the long-term toxicity tests, the 14-d static renewal mortality test was intercalibrated at

the Italian level [69] with SDS according to the UNICHIM protocol (2012).

Further concentrated efforts are necessary to make *Artemia* sp. an official internationally recognized standard biological model in ecotoxicology evaluation. It involves (I) a national member (who then contacts the ISO) upon a request by an industry sector or group for a standard; (II) scope, main definitions, and contents of standards which are scientifically assessed by experts in relevant fields; and (III) multi-stakeholder discussion and reviewing process including experts from related industries, consumer associations, academic institutions, nongovernmental organi-

The authors of this study express their gratitude to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31600257), Public Projects of Zhejiang Province

protocols at present according to the ISO and OECD.

**20**

zations, and governments.

**Acknowledgements**

**5. Conclusions**

Yin Lu\* and Jie Yu College of Biology and Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, China

\*Address all correspondence to: luyin\_zjsru@aliyun.com

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
