Review of ecologically relevant in vitro bioassays to supplement current in vivo tests for whole effluent toxicity testing - Part 1: Apical endpoints

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Finlayson, Kimberly A
Leusch, Frederic DL
van de Merwe, Jason P
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2022
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Abstract

Whole effluent toxicity (WET) testing is commonly used to ensure that wastewater discharges do not pose an unacceptable risk to receiving environments. Traditional WET testing involves exposing animals to (waste)water samples to assess four major ecologically relevant apical endpoints: mortality, growth, development, and reproduction. Recently, with the widespread implementation of the 3Rs to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research and testing, there has been a global shift away from in vivo testing towards in vitro alternatives. However, prior to the inclusion of in vitro bioassays in regulatory frameworks, it is critical to establish their ecological relevance and technical suitability. This is part 1 of a two-part review that aims to identify in vitro bioassays that can be used in WET testing and relate them to ecologically relevant endpoints through toxicity pathways, providing the reader with a high-level overview of current capabilities. Part 1 of this review focuses on four apical endpoints currently included in WET testing: mortality, growth, development, and reproduction. For each endpoint, the link between responses at the molecular or cellular level, that can be measured in vitro, and the adverse outcome at the organism level were established through simplified toxicity pathways. Additionally, literature from 2015 to 2020 on the use of in vitro bioassays for water quality assessments was reviewed to identify a list of suitable bioassays for each endpoint. This review will enable the prioritization of relevant endpoints and bioassays for incorporation into WET testing.

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Science of The Total Environment

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© 2022 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.

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Waste management, reduction, reuse and recycling

Health and ecological risk assessment

Apical endpoints

Bioassay

Direct toxicity assessment

Toxicity pathway

Wastewater

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Finlayson, KA; Leusch, FDL; van de Merwe, JP, Review of ecologically relevant in vitro bioassays to supplement current in vivo tests for whole effluent toxicity testing - Part 1: Apical endpoints, Science of The Total Environment, 2022, pp. 157817

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