Ecotoxicity Assessment of Contaminated Dredged Material with the Marine Amphipod Corophium volutator

Abstract

The incorporation of toxicological data from bioassays can improve the present system of sediment quality criteria in the Netherlands. The use of acute lethality toxicity tests alone does not however provide sufficient discrimination and sensitivity for predicting ecological effects of slightly and moderately contaminated dredged material. Sublethal endpoints are needed for the assessment of environmental hazards of such dredged material. In this study, two approaches were used to identify toxicity of marine sediments collected from 16 locations classified as "slightly and moderately contaminated" on the basis of chemical data: (1) a comparison of growth vs. mortality as different endpoints in the marine amphipod Corophium volutator (Pallas); (2) an investigation on the use of sediment dilutions to characterize the degree of toxicity. The influence of sediment storage time on toxicity was also evaluated. In four out of 16 locations, mortality over 10 days of exposure ranged 80-100%; in two out of 16 locations mortality ranged 40-60%. In the other 10 locations, mortality was below 15%. Results on growth showed that in all locations final dry weight values were significantly lower (a factor of 1.5 to 3) than in controls. Results of dilution experiments showed that if sediments were diluted with a reference sediment of similar physicochemical characteristics, total concentrations of metals, mineral oil, and PAHs decreased as expected and so did the effects on C. volutator. In the 100% contaminated sediments growth was reduced by 32-60% compared to controls. The dilution rate necessary to reduce toxicity to the EC10 value for growth of C. volutator was considered an appropriate endpoint for the evaluation. When sediments were stored for a period of 3-5 months at 4 degreesC and retested, effects on mortality and growth decreased, although some effects on growth were still measured after 5 months of storage. The experiments illustrate the usefulness of ecotoxicity assessment to evaluate contaminted dredged material.

Sensitivity of an indigenous amphipod (Corophium colo) to chemical contaminants in laboratory toxicity tests conducted with sediments from Sydney Harbor, Australia, and vicinity

“…Juveniles typically are more sensitive than adults to toxicants (see, e.g., [35]). Survival of juvenile C. volutator (length, 2.5–4.5 mm) in 10‐d tests was affected by sediments that were only slightly to moderately contaminated [10]. In the present study, greater sensitivity occurred with juveniles (length, 3–4 mm) compared to adults in a trial with cadmium chloride (96‐h LC50 for juveniles, 0.6 mg/L).…”

“…Low concentrations of copper and zinc (<1 mg/kg) resulted in reductions in survival and growth of juveniles, and in reproduction in adults, in tests conducted over 100 d [35,36]. In 10‐d tests, growth of juvenile C. volutator (length, 2.5–4.5 mm) exposed to slightly and moderately contaminated sediments was reduced in comparison to controls [10]. A 14‐d growth test has been developed for C. colo in Australia [37], and testing this methodology on field‐collected sediments would be beneficial.…”

“…Use of the amphipod genus Corophium in sediment toxicity tests is well established, particularly in Europe [9][10][11][12][13][14], and standard test protocols are available for Corophium spp. [15,16].…”

Multi-level assessment of chronic toxicity of estuarine sediments with the amphipod Gammarus locusta: II. Organism and population-level endpoints

“…For the amphipod C. volutator a standardized protocol for acute marine sediment toxicity has been created under the auspices of the Oslo and Paris Commissions (PARCOM, 1993) and given its wide use and amount of toxicological information, can be considered an European ''benchmark'' species (in the sense of Chapman, 1995). Yet, most of the published studies with C. volutator still concern only acute sediment toxicity (Ciarelli, Vonck, & van Straalen, 1997;Grant & Briggs, 2002;Matthiessen et al, 1998) and very few considered chronic exposures or other endpoints than survival and burrowing behavior (e.g., Ciarelli, Vonck, van Straalen, & Stronkhorst, 1998;Conradi & Depledge, 1999). Therefore, despite the growing use of sediment toxicity tests as a fundamental component of ecotoxicological assessments, and the enormous scientific effort devoted to them in the last decade, the new generation (Moore & Dillon, 1993) of chronic marine and estuarine sediment tests is yet to be developed, at least in Europe.…”

Acute toxicity testing with the European estuarine amphipod Corophium multisetosum

“…are very abundant and productive in tidal areas and may be ''keystone species'' because they sustain the ecological integrity (structure and productivity) of the surrounding community. This may justify the reason why it has been chosen in Northern Europe as a standard species for conducting sediment toxicity tests (Ciarelli et al, 1997(Ciarelli et al, , 1998Kater et al, 2001). On the American Continent, however, other amphipod species have been elected as standard, namely of the genus Leptocheirus (McGee et al, 1999), Ampelisca (Ferretti et al, 2002) and Eohaustorius (Anderson et al, 2004) just to mention a few.…”