Rapid bioassay of toxicity in environmental water by LDL-uptaking activityof human cell

Recently, environmental waters involving river water usually used as a sour ce of drinking water have been polluted by various chemicals produced by hu man activities. We reported in our previous work that the variation of toxi city in urban river water is so fast that the general bioassays cannot catc h up with the variation. Thus, a bioassay that can rapidly detect the toxic ity is required, in this work, we developed a rapid bioassay based on LDL, uptaking activity of human cells and elucidated its fundamental characteris tics. Also, toxicity of 30 chemicals was evaluated by this assay and compar ed with that measured by a conventional cell growth inhibition assay. By th e method developed, the cytotoxicity of river water was elucidated in only 4 hours. Therefore, the new bioassay proposed in this work is very promisin g for water quality management. (C) 1998. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd . All rights reserved.