FISH CELL LINES AS RAPID AND INEXPENSIVE SCREENING AND SUPPLEMENTAL TOOLS FOR WHOLE EFFLUENT TESTING

摘要

General agreement exists as to the need to protect aquatic environments from the effects of toxic substances and discharges. Legislation designed to regulate effluent discharges in order to minimize the risk of harm to the environment is in place in most developed nations. For instance, whole effluent toxicity (WET) testing has been legislated with a set of consistent requirements where tests must be initiated within 36 h of effluent sampling. Required tests may be acute (endpoint being survival of test organism) or chronic (endpoints being survival and a sublethal measurement). Regardless of whether tests are acute or chronic, all dischargers would like their test results to be negative, showing no toxicity. As well, they would like the tests to be conducted correctly, under appropriate and consistent quality assurance/quality control guidelines. A detailed and efficient system of completing tests, tracking data, and ensuring quality results is costly and time demanding. Thus, although WET testing generally is useful, it is proving costly, ineffective, and impractical. Many disadvantages have been pointed out and supplemental tests would be desirable (Chapman 2000).