Validity of Mutagenic Activity as an Indicator of River Water Pollution

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate if mutagenicity could be expressed by known water pollution indicators, we determined the mutagenic activity of blue rayon extracts from sampled river water with the Ames test utilizing new strains of bacteria, and compared the results with those of known indicators of water pollution.Methods: Water samples were collected by the blue rayon adsorption method at sixteen sites in six rivers in the North Kyushu district. The Assay of mutagenicity was carried out using the Ames test. The test strains were Salmonella typhimurium TA100, YG1024, YG1041 and YG1042. B(a)P, Trp-P-1 and Trp-P-2 were quantified by HPLC. Determinations of SS, BOD, COD, T-N, T-P, DOC, and A 260 / DOC were performed.Results: The extracts from five sampling sites showed higher mutagenicity toward strain YG1024 with or without S9mix, and the extracts from two of these five sites showed higher mutagenicity toward strain YG1041 with and without S9mix. However, the water pollution indicators did not show specific trends that were consistent with the mutagenic activity.Conclusions: Since the mutagenic activity of river water could not be predicted using known water pollution indicators, we recommend that biological examinations such as mutagenicity tests be added to the indicators that are currently in use.

Mutagenicity Study of Industrial Polluted Waste Water in Zagazig City

“…Mutagenic pollution of natural environments seemed to be a general and serious problem that has been extensively investigated (Sanchez et al, 1992, Malachova 1999Czyz et al,2000, Hu et al, 2003. However, many studies have been carried out to assess the mutagenic activity of some Rivers (Otsu et al, 1998, Czyz et al, 2000Tsukatani et al, 2003, Vijayushree et al, 2005.…”

Mutagenicity as a parameter in surface water monitoring programs—opportunity for water quality improvement

“…Among the compiled data worldwide, the most common assay is the Salmonella/microsome assay (Claxton et al 2010). This test was used to analyze surface water (Umbuzeiro et al 2001;Tsukatani et al 2003;Arimoto-Kobayashi et al 2007), groundwater (Valente-Campos et al 2009), and drinking water (Feretti et al 2005;Guzzella et al 2006;Claxton et al 2008;Heringa et al 2011). The test has also been successfully applied to identify industry mutagenic discharges (Vargas et al 1995;White and Rasmussen 1998;Umbuzeiro et al 2004;Hewitt and Marvin 2005).…”