Evaluating the Comparative Toxicity of DBP Mixtures from Different Disinfection Scenarios: A New Approach by Combining Freeze-Drying or Rotoevaporation with a Marine Polychaete Bioassay

Abstract

The unintended formation of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) may compromise the safety of drinking water. Since no specified DBPs have been found to be responsible for the overall adverse effects and over half of total organic halogen (TOX) remains unidentified, DBP mixture toxicity is gaining increasing interest as a potential indicator of how risky drinking water might be. In this study, a new approach to evaluating the toxicity of drinking water DBP mixtures was developed by combining freeze-drying or rotoevaporation pretreatment with an in vivo high-salinity-tolerance bioassay with the embryos of a marine polychaete Platynereis dumerilii. The DBP recoveries by freeze-drying or rotoevaporation were compared with those by commonly applied liquid-liquid-extraction (LLE). For drinking water subjected to typical disinfection processes (i.e., chlorination, chloramination, chlorine dioxide treatment, and ozonation with or without postchlorination), LLE led to the lowest TOX recovery (11-18%) and the loss of all inorganic DBPs, while freeze-drying and rotoevaporation recovered 28-58% and 35-61% of TOX, respectively, and effectively recovered 81-99% and 85-104% of inorganic DBPs, respectively. Thus, LLE caused an underestimation of the toxicity of DBP mixtures compared with freeze-drying and rotoevaporation. Besides, the comparative toxicity varied significantly for water samples pretreated with different methods due to the effect of inorganic DBPs and a synergistic effect of organic and inorganic DBPs. The new approach revealed that the bromide-rich source water disinfected with ozone caused the highest developmental toxicity, followed by those disinfected with chlorine, chlorine dioxide, and chloramine in that order.