CYTOGENETIC EVALUATION OF THE DRINKING WATER TOXICITY

Abstract

There was considered the use of biotesting for the assessment of the quality of drinking water from the different water supply sources (artesian, packaged and water-pipe one). The method consists in determination of the toxicants action on the specially selected organisms in the standard conditions with registration of changes at behavior, physiological, cellular and subcellular level using hematological indices of fish, frogs, rats and the lymphocyte cultures of the peripheral human blood. Physical-chemical methods determine only the presence and number of chemical elements in the tested water samples because of the very large number of possible combinations of chemical compounds in water solutions (more than 75 million combinations), including behavior of anthropogenic compounds and the natural vulnerability of the water ecosystems to the combined effects from its toxic influence. As the optimal set of determination of the some structural and functional changes of cell genome as the result of the toxic influence of combination of the chemical compounds in the water solutions was offered the micronuclear test and leukocytic formula of the fish, frog and rat blood as biomarker. The reaction of fish, frog, rat test-organisms on the toxic irritation is presented in the change of qualitative content of the cells of peripheral blood. There were demonstrated the prospects of the use of hematological indices of the following test-organisms: Danio rerio fishes, Xenopus clawed frogs, Wistar rats and also the lymphocytes cultures of the human peripheral blood. The special attention was paid to the assessment of the risk for human health of the toxic substances in drinking water, genotoxicity and cytotoxicity that are revealed using hematological indices of animal cells. The universality of cellular organization opens the wide possibilities for toxicological studies using peripheral blood of the different groups of animals (fish, frogs, rats), human lymphocyte cultures and allow assume the following possibility of extrapolation of the received results on human organism