Integral toxicity test of sea waters by an algal biosensor.

An integral toxicity test, based on an algal biosensor and suitable to be used in sea water, is presented. The biosensor was designed and built by coupling a Clark oxygen electrode as transducer and the marine alga Spirulina subsalsa as biological mediator; it constitutes the "core" in a lab-scale prototype of a flow apparatus suitable to continuously monitor, in sea water, the photosynthetic activity of the alga and, from its variation, the marine pollution from the toxicological point of view. Inorganic pollutants (heavy metals) were tested in previous researches while organic ones (chlorophenols, pesticides and surfactants) are the object of the present paper.