VI-13U 



BIOflSSAY CRITERIA 



Bioassay criteria are sorely needed to determine the effects of 

 thenral, domestic, and industrial wastes. Synergistic effects 

 of pollutants must also be known and understood. Once the 

 tolerance limits of individual species for individual pollutants 

 is known, the effects of combinations of various toxicants and 

 physico-chemical water characteristics should be determined, 

 since combined effects are often worse than the sum of individual 

 effects. 



The Need for Bioassay Procedures 

 and Field Testing 



The ultimate goal should be the development of rapid, practical, 

 and definitive bioassay procedures. These procedures should be 

 designed for multi -parameter analysis in order to correlate 

 the response to a variety of common pollutants and environmental 

 variations. In this way, effective water quality criteria can 

 be developed coupled with a capability for predicting biological 

 effects. A major problem in the development of these practical 

 bioassay procedures to determine the water quality requirements 

 of estuarine and marine organisms is the lack of suitable testing 

 methods. There is always the question about the realism of work 

 done in a laboratory; that is to say, how truly results so derived 

 reflect what takes place in nature. Test organisms in the 



