TOXICITY TESTING OF SOUTH-AFRICAN OIL-SPILL DISPERSANTS
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abstract
Before 1981 all toxicity testing of the oil-spill dispersants used in South Africa was performed in the UK using the brown shrimp Crangon crangon. As this species is not found in South African waters, an alternative local species was sought for these tests. After a number of tests, the sand shrimp Palaemon pacificus was found to be the most suitable. Test runs have shown that organisms collected from different areas respond differently when exposed to the same oil concentrations. Animals in the same size class showed the same degree of sensitivity to the oil and all tests were found to be highly temperature dependent. The paper describes the test system and apparatus, and presents equations for determining significant differences in survival rate.
