Smectite clay minerals reduce the acute toxicity of quaternary alkylammonium compounds towards potentially pathogenic bacterial taxa present in manure and soil.

Quaternary alkylammonium compounds (QAACs) are a group of cationic surfactants which are disinfectants with numerous industrial and agricultural applications and frequently released into the environment. One recent hypothesis is that bacteria present in soil will be protected from acute toxic effects of QAACs in the presence of expandable layer silicates due to interlayer sorption. We therefore studied bacterial growth kinetics with high temporal resolution and determined minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of two QAACs, benzyldimethyldodecylammonium chloride (BAC-C12) and didecyldimethylammonium chlorid (DADMAC-C10), for eight strains of different bacterial taxa (Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter, Enterococcus faecium, Enterococcus faecalis, and Pseudomonas fluorescens) in relation to QAAC sorption to smectite and kaolinite. The MICs of BAC-C12 and DADMAC-C10 were in the absence of smectite and kaolinite in the order of 10 to 30 µg mL and 1.0 to 3.5 µg mL for all strains except the more sensitive Acinetobacter strain. For all tested strains and both tested QAACs, the presence of smectite increased apparent MIC values while kaolinite had no effect on MICs. Sorption curves without bacteria showed that smectite sorbed larger amounts of QAACs than kaolinite. Correcting nominal QAAC concentrations employed in toxicity tests for QAAC sorption using the sorption curves explained well the observed shifts in apparent MICs. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) demonstrated that the interlayer space of smectite expanded from 13.7 ± 1 Å to 19.9 ± 1.5 Å after addition of BAC-C12. This study provides first evidence that low charge 2:1 expandable layer silicates can play an important role for buffering QAAC toxicity in soils.