The Use of Short-Term Bioassays to Evaluate the Health and Environmental Risk Posed by an Abandoned Coal Gasification Site

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Abstract
Microbial mutagenicity and chemical analyses were used to assess the health and environmental risk associated with soil and waste tar samples from a coal gasification site. Samples of waste tar and background soil were collected from several locations around the site over a three year period. Samples were sequentially extracted with methylene chloride and methanol and tested using S. typhimurium strain TA98 with and without rat liver enzymes. The methanol extract of one waste tar sample was also separated into acid, base, and neutral fractions. Maximum specific activities of 219 net revertants/mg (6.4 fold increase), 1,829 net revertants/mg (54 fold increase) and 902 net revertants/mg (27 fold increase) were observed from the extracts of samples collected during the first, second and third sampling visit, respectively. There was no consistent correlation between the specific activity of the waste tar extracts and the concentration of benzo(a)pyrene (BAP) or any other chemical constituent that was measured. The weighted activity of the extracts of waste samples ranged from below detection to more than 8,000 times the weighted activity of the extract of a background soil. This site exhibited a risk equivalent to that of a munitions facility and less than that of 13 other waste oil, petroleum contaminated and wood preserving facilities sampled in a companion study. The bioassay was able to detect a genotoxic effect which was not predictable from chemical data alone and shows the potential for using this short term bioassay as a tool to help rank sites as well as areas within a specific site for their order of importance in remedial or clean-up activities.

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