Are simple biomarkers sensitive to detect toxicity of low concentration of metal?

Abstract

Abstract Biomarkers are considered as appropriate and sensitive tools to detect contaminants which effects are recorded on a sentinel organism. Research on simple biomarkers has been conducted in the laboratory to detect the toxicity of low concentrations of Arsenic by using green mussels, Perna Viridis, as sentinel organisms. The simple biomarkers used are biogenesis, Stress On Stress (SOS), and the condition index. Green mussels of 2.5-3.5 cm were exposed to concentrations of 0, 0.008, 0.038 and 0.19 mg/L of arsenic for 14 days. The results revealed that biogenesis was not sensitive to arsenic toxicity in green mussels. The air survival test or Stress on Stress was tested in terms of LT 50 of Kaplan-Meier test. The results showed that LT 50 for treatments of 0, 0.008, 0.038 and 0.19 mg/L were 3.15, 2.76, 2,63 and 3.03 days respectively. It demonstrated that the air survival of mussels in control was longer than those were exposed to a series of arsenic concentrations descriptively, but statistically, they were not significantly different. However, the condition index of the green mussel revealed a significant difference statistically between control and 0.19 mg/L of Arsenic. This suggested that the condition index can detect the toxicity of Arsenic to the green mussel.

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