In Canada, environmental regulations for protection of the biota from the adverse effects of effluents from petroleum refineries have tended to focus on acute toxicity. There is concern those effluents may have other subtle, but still deleterious, long-term effects on aquatic ecosystems. We have used a battery of toxicity tests to assess the acute toxicity, genotoxicity, and chronic toxicity of effluent samples from two Ontario refineries. The test organisms included representatives of the bacterial, algal, plant, cladoceran, and fish communities. The results of our preliminary study indicate that the effluent samples had little acute toxicity to the test organisms. There were indications of some sublethal toxicity to Ceriodaphnia dubia, Panagrellus redivivus, and Pimephales promeIas. One of the effluents inhibited the growth of Selanastrum capricornutum (ICs0 of 59.9%) and Lemna gibba (IC25 of 73.3%) and also caused a 15 percent reduction in the germination of Lactuca sativa seeds. The SOS-Chromotest, a commercially available test that measures the activity of a bacterial DNA repair system, detected genotoxic effects in a single effluent that had been concentrated ten fold. There was no apparent relationship between several chemical parameters and the observed sublethal effects. Further research is needed to establish whether or not the observed toxic effects are typical of effluents from Ontario refineries.

Fermentor studies were conducted to examine the microbial degradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; naphthalene, phenanthrene, anthracene) and a polycyclic aromatic nitrogen heterocyclic (quinoline) using a mixed bacterial culture capable of utilizing these compounds as the sole carbon and energy source for growth. Half-lives for the three PAHs in the cyclone fermentor system ranged from 1 day for naphthalene to 4 days for anthracene. Several major metabolites during the biodegradation of PAHs were also identified. These included 2-hydroxybenzoic acid and 1-naphthalenol (for naphthalene); 1-phenanthrenol and 1-hydroxy-2-naphthalenecarboxylic acid (for phenanthrene); and 3-hydroxy-2-naphthalenecarboxylic acid (for anthracene). Thus our bacterial culture biodegraded the three PAHs by initial hydroxylation of the molecule followed by the eventual cleavage of the ring to yield the ortho-or meta-cleavage intermediates, which would be further metabolized via conventional metabolic pathways. However, biodegradation of the nitrogen-containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compound quinoline by our culture resulted in the accumulation of 4-5 metabolites, one of which has been identified as 2-quinolinol. Work is in progress to identify the other metabolites from quinoline degradation. 0 1992 John Wiley & Sons.

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