Ben Mansour_2011_Environ.Sci.Pollut.Res.Int_19_2634

INTRODUCTION Textile industry is one of the most common and essential sectors in Tunisia However the treatment of textile effluents becomes a university because of their toxic impacts on waters soils flora and fauna MATERIALS AND METHODS The aim of this work was to evaluate the ability of Pseudomonas putida mt-2 to decolorize a textile wastewater and to compare the biologic decolorization process to the chemical one currently used by the textile industry RESULTS P putida exhibited a high decolorizing capacity of the studied effluent compared to the coagulation-flocculation method with decolorization percentage of 86 and 34.5 respectively Genotoxicity of the studied effluent before and after decolorization by P putida mt-2 was evaluated in vitro using the SOS chromotest and in vivo in mouse bone marrow by assessing the percentage of cells bearing different chromosome aberrations compared to not treated mice In addition textile effluent statistically significant influenced acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase activities and lipid peroxidation p 0.01 when compared to not-treated mice Coagulation-flocculation treatment process used by industry was revealed to be ineffective Indeed toxicities persisted after treatment and the effluent did not show any statistically significant decrease in toxicities compared to non-treated effluent Our results indicate that P putida is a promising and improved alternative to treating industrial scale effluent compared to current chemical decolorization procedures used by the Tunisian textile industry.