As a consequence of the 1991 Gulf War, a substantial amount of crude oil (CO) and partially combusted crude oil (PCO) were emitted into the environment. Therefore, the study objective was to evaluate the toxicity of the water soluble fraction (WSF) of CO and PCO on a fish, Menidia beryllina, and an invertebrate, Palaemonetes pugio, in 16-d flow-through tests. Specific growth rate (SGR) was studied as a function of total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPHC) concentration in water. Reductions in SGR were observed in fish exposed to PCO and CO WSFs, with TPHC water concentration being 10-fold higher in CO exposures (67-145 txg/L) than in PCO exposures (4-12 txg/L). Significant negative correlations were observed between TPHC concentration and fish SGR in both CO (r 2 = 0.730) and PCO (r 2 = 0.867) exposures, with the slope being significantly lower for PCO exposures (-0.169) than CO exposures (-0.009). Differences between CO and PCO toxicity were not as clear in shrimp exposures due to slow growth rates and variability in TPHC concentrations. Qualitative PAH analysis indicated that naphthalene was present in the CO WSF whereas chrysene and benzo(a)pyrene were present in the PCO WSE Heavy metal analysis of concentrated stock solutions indicated that the PCO WSF had substantially higher concentrations of some metals (Sr = 2,521 Ixg/L, B = 556 Fg/L, and Ba = 130 Ixg/L) than the CO WSF in which concentrations were less than 55 txg/L. Fish and shrimp tissue analysis did not reveal any uptake of parent PAH compounds from the water, which may be attributed to the formation of PAH metabolites.
More than 700 Kuwait oil wells were set ablaze during the * Preliminary results of this research were presented at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the Society of Toxicology, Baltimore, MD.