Animal bioassay experiments

Name	Type	Comments
C. elegans study	Other	We used C. elegans to investigate the toxicity and mechanism of toxicity of environmental samples from the Mud River and several associated tributaries (Boone County, Southwestern West Virginia). The Mud River flows through the Hobet 21 surface mine from which it receives numerous discharges, both directly and via its tributaries; the sampling sites have previously been characterized with respect to water chemistry and show both conductivity in excess of the proposed EPA benchmark of 300µs/cm-1 and selenium levels in excess of EPA water quality criteria of 5µG Se L-1 [3]. Previous work has suggested that increased levels of metals and total dissolved solids (TDS) may be important stressors in MTR/VF systems [6]. We hypothesized that water and sediment samples from putatively mining-impacted streams would affect the growth of wild-type nematodes, and that mutant nematodes would be differentially affected based on the composition of the stream water and sediment pore water. Furthermore, we analyzed mutant strains that would help us distinguish the contributions of metals or metalloids, osmotic stress and oxidative stress to the toxicity of these samples (Table 1). NOTE FROM EXTRACTOR: MECHANISTIC DATA AVAILABLE IN SUPPLEMENTAL FIGURES BUT DATA NOT EXTRACTED