Ceriodaphnia dubia Chronic Toxicity Tests

Crustaceans are considered an important part of the soft water zooplankton community. Therefore they represent water organisms in the test set for the ecotoxicological characterization of wastes. Following ISO/CD guideline 20665, the chronic Ceriodaphnia dubia test was performed with three waste types: INC, SOI, and WOO. All the ten tests performed were classified as acceptable. Methodologically, almost no problems occurred. The min-max factors (2.08–2.54) between individual EC50 values and the CVs (31–33%) were low for waste eluates, showing that the chronic Ceriodaphnia dubia test is a robust method. These results are in agreement with the few data on substances known from the literature. The obtained data show that the test is able to discriminate different toxicity levels: INC = 4.8%, SOI > 90%, WOO = 0.08%. The sensitivity of the Ceriodaphnia chronic test is equivalent to the rotifer chronic test and slightly higher than the Algae test for the wood eluate. Therefore it is recommended for the toxicity assessment of waste.