Short-term Methods for Estimating the Chronic Toxicity of Effluents and Receiving Waters to Freshwater Organisms

The objective of aquatic toxicity tests with effluents or pure compounds is to estimate the "safe" or "noeffect" concentration of these substances, which is defined as the concentration which will permit normalpropagation of fish and other aquatic life in the receiving waters. The endpoints that have been considered in teststo determine the adverse effects of toxicants include death and survival, decreased reproduction and growth,locomotor activity, gill ventilation rate, heart rate, blood chemistry, histopathology, enzyme activity, olfactoryfunction, and terata. Since it is not feasible to detect and/or measure all of these (and other possible) effects of toxicsubstances on a routine basis, observations in toxicity tests generally have been limited to only a few effects, such asmortality, growth, and reproduction.

Publisher - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)

Subjects - Water Quality; Toxicity

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Citation: EPA. 2002. Short-term Methods for Estimating the Chronic Toxicity of Effluents and Receiving Waters to Freshwater Organisms. Washington (DC): Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Water; EPA-821-R-02-013. 350 pp http://water.epa.gov/scitech/methods/cwa/wet/upload/2007_07_10_methods_wet_disk3_ctf.pdf