Book Description

"This study was initiated to illustrate the difficulties and problems involved in assessing and identifying the toxicity potential of trace amounts of chemicals in sediments. Usually in evaluating the toxicity of sediments, pore water and/or solvent extracts are used to estimate the level of soluble or extractable toxicants. However, it is often difficult or even impossible to detect the presence of the total bioavailable toxicants due to their low concentrations, low solubility and/or insolubility in the extracting solvents. Direct sediment toxicity testing (intimate contact between testing organisms and all solid and liquid parts of a sediment) can significantly circumvent these problems by directly detecting the total toxic response of soluble and insoluble organic and inorganic contaminants. In this study 12 Certified Reference Material (CRM) sediments, whose main constituents were known, were used with solid phase bioassays to try to evaluate the possibility of relating the different bioassay responses to the known chemical composition of each of the CRMs. Results and bioassays used and the difficulties and problems involved in assessing and identifying the toxicity potential of trace amounts of chemicals in sediments are described"--Abstract.