Bioavailability of water-polluting sulfonoaromatic compounds

Highly substituted arenesulfonates are chemically stable compounds with a r ange of industrial applications, and they are widely regarded as being poor ly degradable. We did enrichment cultures for bacteria able to utilise the sulfonate moiety of 14 compounds, and we obtained mixed cultures that were able to desulfonate each compound. The products formed were usually identif ied as the corresponding phenol, but because we could not obtain purl cultu res, we followed up these findings with quantitative work in pure cultures of, e.g., Pseudomonas putida S-313, which generated the same phenols from t he compounds studied. Many of these phenols are known to be biodegradable, or to be subject to binding to soil components. We thus presume that the ca pacity to degrade aromatic sulfonates extensively is widespread in the envi ronment, even though the degradative capacity is spread over several organi sms and conditions.