Abstract

Ozone application is an effective tool to reduce loads of (micro)pollutants in wastewater, however, its ecotoxicological implications are largely unknown. Therefore, the feeding rates of a leaf-shredding invertebrate (Gammarus fossarum) exposed to secondary (=non-ozone) or ozone treated wastewater were investigated to assess potential ecotoxicological effects. Two repetitive experiments resulted in significantly higher feeding rates for gammarids exposed to ozone compared to non-ozone treated wastewater sampled from a treatment plant equipped with a full-scale ozonation. A further experiment confirmed these results also for wastewater from the same treatment plant, when ozonation was conducted at the lab-scale. However, the deviations in dissolved organic carbon profiles of ozone and non-ozone wastewater did not seem to be the driving factor for the effects observed. Two additional experiments displayed on the one hand a higher feeding rate of G. fossarum if exposed to ten-fold enriched eluates from solid phase extraction cartridges loaded with ozone compared to non-ozone treated wastewater. On the other hand, the mean feeding rate of gammarids exposed to non-ozone treated wastewater, which contained hardly any (micro)pollutants (i.e. pharmaceuticals), was at the same level as wastewater from the same source additionally treated with ozone. These results suggest that not an alteration in the organic matrix but a reduction in the load of micropollutants most likely triggered the effects in the bioassay applied. Hence, the feeding rate of G. fossarum appears to be a well-suited bioassay to indicate alterations in ecotoxicological properties of wastewater due to the application of advanced oxidation processes like ozonation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Pharmaceuticals; Ozone; By-products; Solid phase extraction; Gammarus; Feeding assay

Published in

Water Research
2011, Volume: 45, number: 13, pages: 3999-4007
Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Biological Topics


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2011.05.007

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63630