The Evaluation of “Dynamic Daphnia Test” After a Decade of Use

The aim of biological monitoring is to determine the effects of as many pollutants as possible in shortest conceivable time. In contrast to chemical tests, biomonitoring is an alternative which is capable of rapidly detecting acutely toxic conditions in river water. Using standard GC-MS analytical procedures (which are comparatively time consuming), more than 1000 individual organic contaminants have been reported from the lower Rhine (Puyker et al., 1989; van Genderen and Noij, 1991). However, there are a large number of other toxic compounds that cannot be detected by these methods in river water. No consideration has been made of the potential effects of these unknown or chemically undetected substances. The overall consequences of toxic substances in river water, including their synergistic and antagonistic effects, can only be assessed by biological systems. Biotests can also detect pollutants with biological effects which are not included in analytical matrices, or have very high detection limits (LAWA, 1996, 1998). Taking these facts into consideration, and also because of the specific action of a multitude of pollutants, Hendriks and Stouten (1994) point out that more emphasis has to on biological test methods with more sensitive organisms.