Sensitivity of green and blue-green algae to methyl tert-butyl ether

摘要

The toxicity of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) to Chlorella ellipsoidea and Aphanizomenon flos-aquae was tested and assessed for a 15-d incubation with concentrations of MTBE from high (2.00×10{sup}4 mg/L) to low (2 mg/L). The results showed that the toxicity was low when the concentration of MTBE was in the range 1.00×10{sup}4-2.00×10{sup}4 mg/L (the greatest inhibition of growth-rate was 70%-71%, occurred during the day 1-5). Low concentrations (2-500 mg/L) stimulated algal growth up to the greatest effect of 85%-200% when the concentration of MTBE was 50-100 mg/L during day 3-5. The toxicity of MTBE (72-120 h EC{sub}50) was 6.65×10{sup}3-9.58×10{sup}3 mg/L for C. ellipsoidea and that is 1.14×10{sup}4-2.00×10{sup}4 mg/L for A. floc-aquae. We found that the toxicity and ecological risk of MTBE for the algal community structure were low and the toxicity was influenced by the duration time of the test.