Monitoring and assessment of mercury pollution in the vicinity of a chloralkali plant. III. Concentration and genotoxicity of mercury in the industrial effluent and contaminated water of Rushikulya estuary, India.

Aquatic mercury pollution of the Rushikulya estuary in the vicinity of the chloralkali plant at Ganjam, India was monitored over a period from October 1987 to May 1989. The concentrations of aquatic mercury in the water samples taken from the effluent channel and from different sites along the course of the estuary covering a distance of 2 km were periodically recorded and ranged from 0 to 0.5 mg/l. The bioconcentration and genotoxicity of aquatic mercury in the samples were assessed by the Allium micronucleus (MNC) assay. The frequency of cells with MNC was highly correlated not only with bioconcentrated mercury (root mercury) but also with the levels of aquatic mercury. The threshold assessment values such as effective concentration fifty (EC50) for root growth, lowest effective concentration tested (LECT), and highest ineffective concentration tested (HICT) for induction of MNC in Allium MNC assay for the present aquatic industrial mercury were determined to be 0.14, 0.06 and 0.02 mg/l, respectively.