The toxicity of composted sediments from Mediterranean ports evaluated by several bioassays

Abstract

This work investigates the ecotoxicological evaluation of contaminated dredged sediments from French Mediterranean navy harbour (A), commercial port (B) and two composite specimens (C) and (D) coming from the mixture of A and B with other port sediments. The toxicity of elutriates from these sediments is estimated using embryo-toxicity test, Microtox® solid phase test, LuminoTox, phytotoxicity tests and genotoxicity test. Bioassay responses are not clearly correlated with chemical contamination in the whole sediment and vary as a function of tested organisms. The highest contaminated samples (A and C) are almost always more toxic than the less contaminated samples (B and D). Among composite sediments, the mixture effect with other sediments is not efficient to decrease toxicity in sample C, suggesting that other parameters influence toxicity level such as particle size or organic matter content. These parameters should be taken into consideration in order to improve the efficiency of the mixture process and produce composite sediments with low toxicity.