Toxicity Assessment and Remediation of Industrial Wastewater
2000
Birkholz, D.A. | Headley, John V. | Ongley, E.D. | Goudey, Stephen
Conventional pollution prevention strategies involve chemical analyses of environmental samples for priority pollutants (toxic substances listed by environmental regulatory agencies) followed by data assimilation. The latter usually entails a comparison of analytical results with water quality, sediment and air quality guidelines. In addition, results of chemical analyses may be interpreted based on ecological or human health risk assessments. There are several concerns with these traditional approaches. Total reliance on priority pollutants can erroneously lead to the perception that these anthropogenic chemicals represent the universe of toxic chemicals. Also, there is the misconception that selective and sensitive analytical techniques are capable of detecting all chemicals in the environment. Finally, when it is possible to identify chemicals of concern, it is seldom possible to determine the significance of such findings because of inadequate and imprecise toxicological data bases. In light of these shortcomings, in this paper examples of an alternative approach are described based on toxicity testing coupled with chemical manipulation and directed chemical analysis. We present an overview of this approach, and illustrate advantages over traditional methods for site assessments and remediation pertaining to industrial wastewaters. It is demonstrated that toxicity identification evaluation facilitates the establishment of cost-effective clean-up strategies for protection of aquatic ecosystems.
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