REMEDIATION OF PHENOL: ANALYSIS OF REACTION PRODUCTS TOXICITY.

PAISIO CE,; GONZALEZ P.; BERTUZZI M.; AGOSTINI E.

Huerta Grande, Cordoba

Congreso; XVII Jornadas de la SOC. de BIOLOGIA de CORDOBA; 2009

SOCIEDAD DE BIOLOGIA DE CORDOBA

A great quantity of phenolic compounds are discharged from different industries, producing several environmental impacts. So, the treatmment of these effluents is strictly neccesary. We have employed hairy root cultures (HR) from wild type tobacco (wt) and transgenic (DT) plants, to remove phenol with high efficiency. However, it is important not only to evaluate the decrease of a contaminant in the reaction medium but also to determine the potential toxicity of reaction products, which could be done using a bioassay. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the toxicological impact of post removal solutions, derived from treatments performed with tobacco HR (wt and DT), on Rhinella arenarum embryos. Acute test (96 hs) was carried out by exposing larvae to phenol solutions (25-250 mg/L) previously treated with HR. Phenol solutions with concentrations up to 150 mg/L, treated with wt and DT HR, produced 100 % mortality. Percentages of mortality for solutions initially containing 25, 50 and 100 mg/L were: 2.5, 15 and 37% for wt and 10, 57.5 and 65 for DT, respectively. CL50 were 84.5 and 54 for treatments with wt and DT HR, respectively. DT HR showed higher efficiency than wt HR, in removal assays. In conclusion, phytoremediation performed with tobacco HR was effective and reduced significatively the toxicity of post removal solutions, initially containing phenol in concentrations below 150 mg/L