GENOTOXICOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON THE WASTE MINE DRAINAGE WATER

The waste acid-mine drainage water obtained from a polluted mining are a in the Slovak Republic contains a high load of toxic metals which si gnificantly exceeds the Slovak Limits for Drinking Water. Elements wer e determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and by using AAS with the hydride generation technique. Genotoxic evaluation revealed t hat, in the modified preincubation Salmonella typhimurium/microsome mu tagenicity assay, the acid-mine drainage water was mutagenic in the st rain TA97 in the absence and in the presence of S9 mix, whereas in the strain TA102 it was mutagenic only in the presence of mammalian activ ation. The simultaneous test of phytotoxicity and clastogenicity in Vi cia sativa L. proved the high phytotoxic and clastogenic effects of th e tested waste mine drainage water. Due to the high concentrations of toxic elements detected in the mutagenic waste acid-mine drainage wate r we can conclude that toxic metals might be responsible for the genot oxic potential of the waste drainage. However, we do not entirely excl ude an acidic environment mediation.