Some fertilizers can contain polymers composed of acrylamide (AMD) or acrylic acid (AA). Cross-linked polyacrylamides (PAM) and polyacrylates (PAA) can absorb huge amounts of water, thus belonging to the class of Superabsorbent Polymers (SAP). SAPs are available under various commercial formulations used for improving the water retention capacity of the soil or used as coating substance to promote a controlled release of nutrients. PAMs having a linear structure are in turn water soluble and are commonly used as flocculants/coagulants for accelerating liquid-solid phase separation in many industrial domains. To date, no fertilizer containing PAAs or PAMs in order to improve the water retention capacity is authorized in Switzerland, but there are some authorized fertilizers originating from recycling processes where flocculants have been used and therefore linear PAMs are supposed to be present as residuals. As polymers are not covered by main chemical regulations for environmental risk assessment, knowledge about their ecotoxicological effects is still limited. Based on a request by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG), the Ecotox Centre composed this report, which aims at (i) summarizing the state of the art about the effects of PAMs and PAAs to soil and water organisms, when applied with fertilizers and (ii), if data availability allows, deriving critical values for use in risk assessment. [...]