Reuse water: Exposure duration, seasonality and treatment affect tissue responses in a model fish.

Partially remediated gray (reuse) water will likely find increasing use in a variety of applications owing to the increasing scarcity of freshwater. We aimed to determine if a model fish, the goldfish, could sense reuse water using olfaction (smell), and if 30min or 7d (acute) and 60d (sub-chronic) exposures would affect their olfactory responses to natural odorants. We examined olfaction as previous studies have found that numerous chemicals can impair the olfactory sense, which is critical to carrying out numerous life-sustaining behaviors from feeding to mating.

Sensory and Behavioral Responses of a Model Fish to Oil Sands Process-Affected Water with and without Treatment.

If oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) is to be returned to the environment, a desire is that it not adversely affect aquatic life. We investigated whether a relevant model fish (rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss) could detect OSPW using its olfactory sense (smell) and whether exposure to it would result in behavioral changes. We also investigated whether ozonation of OSPW, which lowers the concentration of organic compounds attributed with toxicity (naphthenic acids), would ameliorate any observed adverse effects.

Sublethal toxicity of chlorpyrifos to salmonid olfaction after hypersaline acclimation.

Salmonid habitats can be impacted by several environmental factors, such as salinization, which can also affect salmonid tolerance to anthropogenic stressors, such as pesticides. Previous studies have shown that hypersaline acclimation enhances the acute toxicity of certain organophosphate and carbamate pesticides to euryhaline fish; however, sublethal impacts have been far less studied. The current study aims to determine how hypersaline acclimation and exposure to the organophosphate chlorpyrifos (CPF) impact salmonid olfaction.

Advanced analytical mass spectrometric techniques and bioassays to characterize untreated and ozonated oil sands process-affected water.

Oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) is a toxic and poorly biodegradable mixture of sand, silt, heavy metals, and organics. In this study, qualitative and quantitative comparisons of naphthenic acids (NAs) were done using ultraperformance liquid chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC TOF-MS), Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) MS, and ion mobility spectrometry (IMS). The unique combination of these analyses allowed for the determination and correlation of NAs, oxidized NAs, and heteroatom (sulfur or nitrogen) NAs.