Overlooked Effluent Toxicity: A Missing Link in China’s Wastewater Discharge Standards

< 0.05, ANOVA). Interestingly, WWTP treatment capacity emerged as the predominant driver of WET variation, underscoring the need to prioritize large-size WWTPs in flexible wastewater risk control strategies. These findings expose a significant gap between wastewater risk management needs and current control practices, as WWTP effluents showed substantially higher toxicity than their receiving waters, advocating for the scale-prioritized toxicity-driven discharge standards to secure more safe and efficient water sustainability management in China.