Genotoksyczność wody do picia w wybranych wodociągach

The ever increasing degradation of water sources, as well as the concomitant need of applying chemical disinfectants, has directed the attention of scientists and engineers to the problem of longterm exposure of human organisms to water pollutants with health hazard potential. Considering the specific physico-chemical properties of water, epidemiological studies or long-term experiments on animals are useless. For this reason, our knowledge of the potential mutagenicity of organic water pollutants is based primarily on-bacterial screening tests, such as the UMU test or the Ames test. The need of unifying the investi-gations into the mutagenicity of water gave a spur to DIN and ISO to attempt standardization of the two screening tests mentioned above. For the purpose of the present study, use was made of the Tube UMU test (which resembles the UMU microtest proposed by ISO) to evaluate the genotoxicity of water. The samples under test came from waterworks of choice (which use different treatment methods and different types of water intake), from the water-pipe network, and from oligocenic wells. The present study substantiates the utility of the UMU test in evaluating routinely the genotoxicity of drinking water. Significant genotoxicity levels were detected in the majority of disinfected water samples, and they were found to vary according to the type of intake. More advanced treatment trains (for example those involving carbon beds) bring about a substantial abatement of mutagenicity in drinking water. The genotoxicity ot the disinfected water samples should be attributed to a group of non-volatile pollutants.