A major environmental science conference is continuing in Long Beach, California, this week. GallonDaily finds the annual North American meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) particularly useful as an indicator of potential future environmental risks. The conference involves the presentation of about 800 papers on a wide range of environmental science topics and a similar number of poster presentations on emerging research.

Among the highlights this year are sessions on:

• the continuing effects of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill
• environmental implications of flame retardants
• environmental effects of nanotechnology
• ecological risks of personal care products
• persistent organic pollutants in the marine ecosystem
• pesticides in urban aquatic environments
• ecotoxicity of military materials
• contaminants of emerging concern in human tissue
• risk of rodenticides to non-target species
• environmental contaminants of emerging concern
• assessing impacts on the environment of oil sands reclamation strategies
• life cycle assessment for emerging technologies
• increasing the sustainability of plastic from cradle to grave
• alternative methods for evaluating toxicity
• endocrine disrupting substances in the environment

GallonDaily’s editor will be making a brief presentation on Application of LCA to Consumer Product Environmental Claims in the interactive poster session on Thursday afternoon.

The program and abstracts for the SETAC 2012 North America meeting are at http://longbeach.setac.org/