Statistical Comparison of Bioassays for Assessment of Toxicity of Organic Components of Wastewater to Activated Sludge
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 130, Issue 4
Abstract
In aquatic toxicity testing, no single test species responds appropriately to all toxicants. Therefore test batteries consisting of several individual assays are becoming more common. The species comprising a test battery should be representative of the entire system of interest. Each assay should be complementary to other components in the test battery and the test battery should not include redundant tests. We studied the selection of test battery components for the assessment of the toxicity of organic chemicals to activated sludge. The assays considered were the continuous Shk1, Microtox, Polytox, activated sludge respiration inhibition, Nitrosomonas, and Tetrahymena assays. The correlations between the toxicity data obtained from these assays were analyzed by examining the correlation matrix and by principal component analysis. These statistical methods showed that the Nitrosomonas assay should be included in test batteries plus one of the remaining five assays for assessing toxicity of organic compounds to activated sludge.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 130 • Issue 4 • April 2004
Pages: 484 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 10, 2002
Accepted: Apr 9, 2003
Published online: Mar 15, 2004
Published in print: Apr 2004
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