Ecological risk assessment of pollutants has been a focus of attention at home and abroad in recent years. Domestic and foreign scholars have put forward various methods and models for ecological risk assessment. The purpose is to evaluate the ecological risk of pollutants in environmental media by establishing different indicators, hoping to predict their adverse ecological impacts, as well as assess the potential for ecological changes caused by a certain factor in the past. This paper reviews the development of ecological risk assessment, summarizes the ecological risk assessment models and methods about pollutants in water, sediment and soil, summarizes the Risk Quotient (RQ), AQUATOX model, Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD), Index of Geoaccumulation (Igeo), Hakanson potential ecological risk index to determine the level of ecological risk. According to the types and concentrations of pollutants in different environmental media, the appropriate method should be selected for ecological risk assessment. In the future, more research should be conducted on the ecological risk assessment method for the coexistence of multiple pollutants under different environmental media, riching ecological risk assessment method system, and providing a more appropriate assessment method for the ecological risk of various pollutants.