1.

Discussion and Results Root and shoot inhibition

The plants toxicity test has the aim to measure how sensitive the plants test organisms
are when exposed to toxicants. In this case, the copper and contaminated soil exposition
were analyzed and the test was analysed by root and shoot inhibition.
For the copper exposition the white mustard was used as a test organism and a sample
exposed only with distillated water was used as control and measure the value in % of
the inhibition, besides that, a series of copper titillation were made in the concentrations
of 0.04ppm, 0.4ppm, 4ppm, 40ppm and 400ppm (each sample). Secondly, wheat was
the other test organism which was used for testing the diesel oil and transistor oil
exposition; as well as in the copper test a sample with control soil was used to calculated
the percentage of inhibition of root and shoot growth.
The results for the length of the plants are available right below:

As can be seen, there are some anomalies at the 0.04 ppm and 0.4 ppm when the average
root is bigger than with distilled water, that is 7.7. Other anomaly is that the average
length of the root in 0.04 ppm is smaller than the one in 0.4 ppm. It maybe explained if
the Cu has some beneficial effect in the growth of roots in low concentrations. Despite
that every sample followed the expected result, decreasing in size when increasing
concentration.
Comparing the growth of shoots, the only anomaly was observed in toxicant
concentration of 4 ppm. The other averages show that increasing the concentration, the
growth is inhibited.
The results for the length of the wheat exposed to contaminated soil are available as
well:

In this case, the soil contaminated with trans. oil was more toxic than the diesel exposed
soil because, as we can see, there was no growth in presence of Trans. Oil.
Based on these data, we could come up with a concentration response curve for the
copper concentration and the values of EC20 and EC50 which indicates in what
concentration the inhibition of growth is equal 20% and 50%. On the next page can be
found the concentration responses curves of root and shoot for Cu (ppm):

(ppm)
EC20
EC50

Root
1.6
4.0

Shoot
10.2
20.5

Those were the calculated values at the plotted graphs above for the plants being
analyzed. The values of two more plants were given to us to make a comparison between
our values and the others.

As can be seen, the values maintain an average except for the common wheat that is
another type of plant with other properties and a different sensitivity.
Comparing the EC20 and EC50 of the given white mustard can be found a relatively
great difference between EC20 and EC50 while at our plant the difference of Cu
concentration to get from 20% to 50% of inhibition is only 2.4 ppm.

The inhibition of root and shoot for the contaminated soil can be calculated by
comparing the values of the control soil plant growth.
In summary, Cu was more inhibitor at the root part of the plant due to the fact that is
more probable that it gets more in contact with the contaminant than the shoot.
The Concentration response curve shows us how effective is the concentration of any
Contaminant, as the curve is plotted a series of information could be extracted from the
graph. One of them is the EC20 and EC50, these are parameters that exposes how
sensitive is the plant and if the contaminant is lethal or not.

Discussion and Results - Collembola

In this experiment the test organism used was the Collembolla. It is a really small
arthropod that is sensitive to soil contamination because of its respiratory system. Two
doses response curves were plotted to verify the inhibition and the dose of each
contaminated soil was used to analyze the mortality of the Collembolla counting the
ones that were swimming. Below can be found the data that generated the graphs and
these response curves, with diesel and transistor oil:

Since we have the dose curves we can extract the values of ED20 and ED50 which are:
(g soil)
ED20
ED50

Diesel
0,9
14.1

Trans
2,4
4.8

As we can see, the diesels contamination is more effective on collembollas metabolism

due to the organisms ventral tube that absorbs the volatile chemical organic compounds
from diesel.
The dose response curves were able to show us with not very accurate results the
mortality of the animal with the respectively dose.