Toxic effects of some oil dispersants

Abstract

Unavoidable possibility of oil spills, when they are polluting environment, increases because of the increasing growth of oil industry (building of mechanisms for oil extraction, growing number of petrol stations, motor transport, navigation) and rising usability of oil and its products in various ways. It makes a lot of problems: beginning from financial damage to impacts on wildlife or loses of aesthetic view. Various clean-up technologies are used for recovering oil spills. Dispersion is one of them. Dispersive measures (dispersants) - are substances that break oil slick into small droplets. Though modern dispersants are less toxic for environment than oil, however, they can cause danger to organisms. These pollutants (the dispersants and the oil) can affect live organisms synergetically with bigger harm if they work separated. So, the necessity of the real assessment of the environmental condition determines near direct (physical and chemical) methods to use such methods that are based on responsive reactions of the organisms to the pollution factors. The influence of oil and the dispersing agents “Simple green”, “Hydro Break Plus”, “Degradoilas”, “BR” and “BEC 400” on organisms in fresh (test - organisms Daphnia magna and Thamnocephalus platyurus) and the Baltic sea (test - organism Artemia salina) water determined using TOXKIT microbiotests. LC50's was calculated to compare the toxicity of these pollutants. The LC50 of petroleum hydrocarbons and the dispersing agents “Simple green”, “Hydro Break Plus”, “Degradoilas”, “BR” and “BEC 400” on water organisms are different though there is no doubt about their toxicity.