Results of Water-Quality Monitoring in the Elbe River Below Pardubice

Abstract

Experiments with rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) were used in the study of cumulation of xenobiotic substances occurring in Elbe water in biota's tissues and their effects on health and reproduction. Samples of feed water (Valy profile of Elbe and Prague tape waters), sewage water from chemical works Syntesia Semtin Co., water from soils where hay was harvested for rabbit feeding, was from fodder (hay and premixes), skeleton muscles, depot fat, liver, blood, and plasma of rabbits were analyzed and pathomorphological investigations of internal organs were performed. As, Hg, Cd, Pb, Cr, Ni, Cu, and Zn were measured as hazardous elements and strippable non-polar compounds, PCB, chlorinated pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), chloro- and nitrophenols, triazines, aromatic amines, and nitroaromatics as organic xenobiotic compounds (OXC). Non-polar OXC were determined in rabbit fat, polar OXC in muscles. Elbe water and sewage water from Syntesia were fractioned and the fractions were tested on mutagenity according to Ames. Higher content of Cd was found in the tissues of rabbits fed with hay from land inundated with Elbe water below Pardubice than in those fed with hay from a control locality. However, the permissible limits have not been exceeded in all hazardous elements. In comparison to the control, higher content was found for some PAH (fluoranthene, pyrene, phenanthrene) in rabbit fat. The highest mutagenic activity showed polar substances (chloro- and nitrophenols, aromatic amines, and nitroaromatics).