Genetic risk assessment of acid waste water containing heavy metals

The mutagenic/cancerogenic potential of acid-mine water from the Slovak min ing area Rudnany containing a high load of toxic metals was evaluated after its application to three model test organisms (bacteria Salmonella typhimu riumn, yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and plant Vicia saliva L.). The resul ts obtained from the modified preincubation Ames assay proved that 1000-fol d diluted waste water exhibited mutagenic Effect in three (TA97, TA98, TA10 2) of four bacterial strains. In the test on yeast the toxicity and genotox icity increased as a function of the concentration. At the highest concentr ation used (0.06 %) the frequency of revertants increased 6 times and conve rtants increased 4.5 times above the control level. In the simultaneous phy totoxicity and clastogenicity assay, concentration dependent toxicity and s tatistically significant clastogenicity was proved. We can conclude that he avy metals might be responsible for the genotoxic/cancerogenic potential of the test water. However, we do not entirely exclude the possibility that i ts genotoxicity might be promoted by its high acidity.