SEC I ION 8 



A RESEARCH SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPING FISHERIES STANDARDS FOR WATER QUALITY, 

 CONSIDERING THE PECULIARITIES OF TRANSFERRING EXPERIMENTAL DATA TO 



NATURAL WATER BODIES 



L.A. Lesnikov 



At present in the USSR, two groups of standards of water quality are 

 being developed with the purpose of protection of the waters from pollu- 

 tion: 1) sanitary hygienic, and 2) fisheries MPC (maximum permissible 

 concentrations). Both groups of the MPC are to be approved by the 

 Ministries of Health of the USSR, and Fisheries of the USSR respectively, 

 and will be official interdepartmental standards. 



When setting fisheries standards, complex investigations are performed 

 on water-bodies, and in laboratories. The latter are most used, since 

 only experimental work enables the investigator to establish clearly the 

 relation between concentrations of pollutants, and the degree of the dis- 

 turbance in organisms. 



The results of field investigations may be taken into account, but 

 only for comparison, since alterations in organism response are always 

 the result of the actions of not only the pollutants, but also of other 

 natural and anthropogenic factors. In addition, under experimental condi- 

 tions, it is possible to evaluate the effect of substances on the living 

 functions of organisms, while in natural waters the influence of pollution 

 is not direct, but functions through environmental and ecological condi- 

 tions. 



In the USSR there are more than 10U fisheries standards. In 60 

 percent of cases the fisheries standards are close to the corresponding 

 sanitary-hygienic ones, but in 40 percent they are more stringent, 

 occasionally 10-100 times more restrictive (Lesnikov, 19/4). 



In the USA, only recently investigations were started on the chronic 

 action of low concentrations of pollutants on aquatic organisms (Brungs, 

 1972). In the USSR, such investigations have been performed since 1938- 

 1939 (Eltsina, 1939; Stroganov, 1940; Stroganov, 1941). 



From the very beginning, elaboration of the fisheries MPC in the USSR 

 was based on the following principles formulated by N.S. Stroganov (1941): 



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