Development of aquatic plant bioassays for rapid screening and interpretive risk assessments of metal mining liquid waste waters
- Saskatchewan Research Council, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada)
- Technical Univ. of Denmark, Lyngby (Denmark)
- Univ. of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada)
The metal mining industry faces extraordinary challenges to become environmentally sustainable. The use of non-photosynthetic organisms alone to describe environmental impact has been recognized by regulatory agencies, industry and academia as being totally inadequate both in Europe and North America. The lack of adequate testing methods are of even more concern to the metal mining industry due to non-biodegradable nature of its waste streams. The authors are developing new and assessing old aquatic phytotoxicity testing methods. They expect this will result in: (1) rapid and sensitive photosynthetic screening tools for the assessment of environmental hazard of on-site effluents both in freshwater in marine environments; (2) environmental relevance by including phytoplankton, submergent and emergent macrophytes, and marine macrobenthic algae; and (3) risk assessment improvements for different categories of wastes and toxicity modifications caused by various environmental factors. Preliminary data from this work show that the chemical effluent limits set in the ``Metal mining liquid effluent regulations`` (1977) provide variable protection of aquatic photosynthetic organisms and aquatic effects of the more toxic metals, copper, nickel, and zinc, may occur at levels that are one to two orders of magnitude lower than present limits. To establish adequate protection of receiving water bodies it may be necessary to establish site-specific criteria taking into consideration toxicity modifying factors of individual sites. If the establishment of such criteria is determined with a host of ecologically relevant organisms, it will be possible to design effective environmental protection at the least possible cost.
- OSTI ID:
- 218450
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9511137-; ISBN 1-880611-03-1; TRN: IM9619%%171
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) world conference, Vancouver (Canada), 5-9 Nov 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Second SETAC world congress (16. annual meeting): Abstract book. Global environmental protection: Science, politics, and common sense; PB: 378 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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