Biodegradability of organic compounds in river and sea water was tested according to the simple and rapid method, the cultivation method, which was reported in our previous report. Out of 170 chemicals tested, 103 compounds were judged to be hard-, 43 to be moderate-, and 24 to be easy-of-degradability. In comparison with the MITI method, our method was applicable to wider range of compounds with less expensive equipments and gave more strict marks in 3 d, indicating that our method is a useful screening test method for biodegradability of chemicals in environmental water.
