2021 Volume 63 Issue 3 Pages 119-135
In the previous studies, the acute toxicity effects of alkanes, which are the main components of gasoline, on luminous bacteria have evaluated for the purpose of developing a soil contamination evaluation method for petroleum hydrocarbons. On the other hand, alkanes are known to be converted to alcohols by microbial decomposition. Therefore, in this study, in addition to investigating the acute toxicity effects of alcohols on luminous bacteria, the effects on the soil pollution evaluation for alkanes in the coexistence with the produced alcohols were examined. The strength of the acute toxicity effect in the test using the test solution with alcohol concentration of 100 vol% was methanol ＜ ethanol ＜ 2-methyl-1-propanol < 2-propanol ＜ 1-propanol ＜ 2-methyl-2-propanol ＜ 1-butanol ≒ 2-butanol. That means the acute toxicity effect was higher with increasing carbon number among the straight-chain alcohols and was higher with straight-chain types than with branched-chain ones. On the other hand, the alcohols tested in this study were shown to have no acute toxic effects on luminous bacteria at low concentrations (1 vol% in the test solution). In the method, which uses methanol as a solvent for extracting petroleum hydrocarbons from contaminated soil, the presence of alcohols in contaminated soil is considered not to affect the soil pollution evaluation for petroleum hydrocarbons such as alkanes.
