COMPARISON OF ACUTE TOXICITY AND GENOTOXIC CONCENTRATIONS OF SINGLE COMPOUNDS AND WASTE ELUTRIATES USING THE MICROTOX MUTATOX TEST SYSTEM/

The Mutatox test has been developed by Microbics Corp., U.S.A., in add ition to the widely used acute toxicity test Microtox, The Mutatox tes t indicates the presence of any material in a test sample that causes genetic damage to dark variants of the luminescent bacteria Vibrio fis cheri, As the Microtox test is less time-consuming and more cost-effec tive than the Mutatox test, the possibility of using the EC50 measured by Microtox for rangefinding of genotoxic concentrations for the Muta tox test was examined, Both tests were applied on single compounds and several waste elutriates. The genotoxic potential of two PAH metaboli tes-1-hydroxypyrene and 9-fluorenone-1-carboxylic acid-was detected, A ccording to the present results the highest concentration of a sample in the Mutatox test should in general exceed the EC50 by about 5-10 ti mes, Elutriates were submitted to analyses of TOC, heavy metals, pheno ls, and PAH; additionally GC/MS screening analyses were carried out, I n most cases correlations of ecotoxicological effects with single cont aminants were not possible, but it can be assumed that these effects w ere produced by the interaction of inorganic and organic compounds pre sent in the elutriates. (C) 1997 Academic Press.