TOXICITY OF PHENYLMERCURIC NITRATE USING VIBRIO-HARVEYI AS THE TEST ORGANISM - EVALUATION OF REPRODUCIBILITY

Vibrio harveyi was used in a direct test to evaluate the toxicity of p henylmercuric nitrate. This study was undertaken to determine the esti mated median effective concentration (EC50) of this chemical and to ev aluate this toxicity test by comparing repeated experiments. These res ults suggest that this direct toxicity test has a reasonable degree of repeatability. Evaluation of bioluminescence (counts) was determined to exhibit a normal distribution. The EC50 and its confidence interval of phenylmercuric nitrate are 0.0012 ppm and 0.0002 ppm, respectively . Various statistical analyses were performed on the repeated experime nts for comparison purposes.