Toxicity Testing Using Microorganisms

First Published in 1986, this two-volume set offers comprehensive insight into the testing of toxic substances using microorganisms as reference. Carefully compiled and filled with a vast repertoire of notes, diagrams, and references this book serves as a useful reference for students of medicine and other practitioners in their respective fields.

First Published in 1986, this two-volume set offers comprehensive insight into the testing of toxic substances using microorganisms as reference. Carefully compiled and filled with a vast repertoire of notes, diagrams, and references this book serves as a useful reference for students of medicine and other practitioners in their respective fields.

The determination of the hazards resulting from the accidental or deli berate contamination of terrestrial and aquatic environments is in most countries still lirnited to the detection and quantification of the suspected pollutants by chemical analyses. Such an approach is unfortunately hampered by the following constraints : the costs as weil as the technical difficulties of analyzing every individual chemical which may be present in the sampies, and the difficulty of assessing the hazards and risks of environmental contaminations from a set of chemical data. During the last decades the scientific and regulatory community has gradually realized that biological methodologies have to be taken into consideration for an ecologically meaningful assessment of the toxicological hazards of contaminants. Effect evaluations obtained with biological techniques indeed integrate the impact of all the contaminants to which living biota are exposed. Bioassays with selected test species representative for the biological commumtles of the environments under consideration, are now applied more or less regularly to determine toxic and genotoxic effects. Taking into account the species specific and chemical specific character of toxicity to biota, the necessity of a «battery of tests» approach with species of different trophic levels is currently also generally accepted and implemented. It is dear that a balanced partnership between chemical, biological, toxicological and microbiological analyses is always the best strategy for generating the broadest information base on environmental hazards.

Bioassays are among the ecotoxicologist's most effective weapons in the evaluation of water quality and the assessment of ecological impacts of effluents, chemicals, discharges, and emissions on the aquatic environment. Information on these assessment aids is needed throughout the international scientific and environmental management community. This comprehensive reference provides an excellent overview of the small-scale aquatic bioassay techniques and applications currently in use around the world. This special volume is the result of several years of collaboration between Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Internationally recognized research scientists at many institutions have contributed to this state-of-the-art examination of the exciting, environmentally important field of microscale testing in aquatic toxicology. Microscale Testing in Aquatic Toxicology contains over forty chapters covering relevant principles, new techniques and recent advancements, and applications in scientific research, environmental management, academia, and the private sector.

Vol. 2: editors, Bernard J. Dutka, Gabriel Bitton.