THE DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF METAL AND ORGANIC POLLUTANTS IN POTABLE WATER USING ENZYME ASSAYS SUITABLE FOR SENSOR DEVELOPMENT

A panel of five pollutants have been identified as a model system to s tudy: the herbicide atrazine, phenol, pentachlorophenol, cadmium and c hromium. The non-specific inhibition of the activity of 23 enzymes was studied for these five pollutants at 1000 times the statutory limits. An array of six enzymes was chosen to develop four computer models fr om which the resultant pattern of inhibition could be interpreted usin g artificial neural nets. The models clearly demonstrated that the ide ntification of pollutants using this novel approach is a feasible prop osition. No false negatives were demonstrated at the concentrations te sted by any of the models studied and the false positive rate was acce ptably minimal. The models further demonstrated their ability to be se mi-quantitative with regard to the level of pollutant present.