Ecotoxicological effects of ballast water effluent teated by an electrolytic method on marine environment

Abstract

Ballast water effluent treated by an electrolytic method contains reactive chlorine species and disinfection by-products (DBPs). In this study, we conducted whole effluent toxicity (WET) testing and ecological risk assessment (ERA) to investigate its ecotoxicological effects on marine environment. WET testing was carried out for three marine pelagic organisms, i.e., diatom Skeletonema costatum, rotifer Brachionus plicatilis and fish Paralichthys olivaceus. The biological toxicity test revealed that S. costatum was the only organism that showed apparent toxicity to the effluent; it showed no observed effect concentration (NOEC), lowest observable effect concentration (LOEC) and effect concentration of 50% (EC50) values of 12.5%, 25.0% and 83.3%, respectively, at brackish water condition. In contrast, it showed insignificant toxicity at seawater condition. B. plicatilis and P. olivaceus also showed no toxicities to the effluent at the both salinity conditions. Meanwhile, chemical analysis revealed that the ballast water effluent contained total residual oxidants (TROs) below 0.03 μg/L and a total of 20 DBPs including bromate, volatile halogenated organic compounds (VOCs), halogenated acetonitriles (HANs), halogenated acetic acids (HAAs) and chloropicrin. Based on ERA, the 20 DBPs were not considered to have persistency, bioaccumulation and toxicity (PBT) properties. Except monobromoacetic acid, the ratio of predicted environmental concentration (PEC) to predicted no effect concentration (PNEC) of the other 19 DBPs did not exceed 1. Thus, our results of WET testing and ERA indicated that the ballast water effluent treated by electrolysis and subsequently neutralization was considered to have no adverse impacts on marine environment.