[Determination of the toxicity of industrial waste by means of a bacterial test (author's transl)].

The decision on whether industrial waste should be deposited on general or special dumps depends upon the toxicity of the waste and thus upon the risk of ground-water pollution and the killing off of micro-organisms responsible for breaking down waste products. Since chemical analyses that are to provide information on toxicity are frequently very costly, an attempt was made to determine the toxicity of solid or semi-solid waste with the aid of a bacterial test. As in the perforated-plate test, here, too, the formation and size of inhibition zones were used to determine the toxicity after diffusion of substances contained in industrial waste. About 30 different types of industrial waste were examined with this method. For almost all substances a positive correlation of the (known) constituents of waste to the formation of inhibition zones was found to exist. The influence exercised by solubility and diffusibility and other problems are dealt with.