SECTION 1 



TOXICITY TESTS IN THE REGULATION OF WASTE DISCHARGES 

 IN THE UNITED STATES 



Peter Doudoroff 



I have recently undertaken a cursory examination of much of the Soviet 

 literature in the field of aquatic toxicology. I have found in that lit- 

 erature no evidence to indicate that biological tests for toxicity of 

 wastewaters are often required or routinely performed in regulating waste 

 discharges in the U.S.S.R. Neither the standardization of toxicity bio- 

 assay methods, nor the formulation or systemization of procedures for the 

 application of bioassay results in the control of waste disposal seems to 

 have received nearly as much attention in the U.S.S.R. as in the United 

 States. Some of the pertinent ideas and current practices of American 

 workers that are briefly and incompletely reviewed here, and my own 

 thoughts concerning their relative merits, may be interesting and useful, 

 therefore, to those Soviet scientists who must deal with regulatory pro- 

 blems. I know that many industrial effluents and their individual com- 

 ponents have been tested by Soviet investigators for acute and chronic 

 toxicity to fish and other aquatic organisms. But it is not that scienti- 

 fic research into the toxicity of these various water pollutants to which 

 I refer. I am speaking of regular biological testing of wastewaters by 

 technicians to verify compliance with, or to detect violations of, some 

 specific regulatory requirements limiting the discharge of toxic wastes. 



Toxicology studies reported in the Soviet literature often have been 

 directed toward the determination of maximum acceptable concentrations of 

 paricular toxic substances to actual concentrations of which can be deter- 

 mined by chemical analysis is receiving waters. In the United States, 

 also, much research of this kind has been done and continues. Defi- 

 ciencies in the chemical criteria of water or wastewater quality so 

 developed, and a need for more reliance on biological tests of effluents 

 in pollution control have long been apparent to many American workers. 

 We realized that many of the toxic components of industrial wastes had 

 not been, and would not soon be identified, or could not be reliably mea- 

 sured for lack of suitable analytical methods. Further, the toxicities 

 of even identified and measurable compounds to important species of fish 

 (and the interactions of these toxicants with natural components of the 

 various receiving waters and among themselves in complex mixtures) were 

 mostly unknown and unpredictable. Largely for these reasons, my 

 colleagues and I long ago undertook the standardization of toxicity bio- 

 assay methods suitable for routine application in industrial laboratories, 



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