Toxicity assessment of arsenic on common carp (Cyprinus carpio) and development of natural sorbents to reduce the bioconcentration by RSM methodology.

The objective of the present study was firstly acute toxicity bioassay of arsenic on common carp (Cyprinus carpio) and then the development of natural sorbent beds (clinoptilolite and pumice) to reduce bioconcentration of arsenic in muscle tissue were considered in comparative evaluation. In this regard, the acute toxicity of arsenic on juvenile fish was assessed according to the OECD guideline (No. 203). Moreover, the efficacy of clinoptilolite and pumice as natural sorbents was assessed to reduce bioconcentration of arsenic in the fish muscle tissue during a 21 day by response surface methodology (RSM) under central composite design (CCD). The most important point of this study was to evaluate the interactions between independent variables (clinoptilolite and pumice as sorbents and arsenic as pollutant) and arsenic bioconcentration in fish muscle tissue as a dependent variable (response). In these regards, a total of 24 sets of experiments (12 sets for clinoptilolite and pumice separately) were designed by the software to achieve the best adsorption conditions. According to the arsenic toxicity test, results as estimated by Probit method, the 96 h LC was 9.48 ± 1.01 mg/L. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) which was applied to modeling and optimization of response revealed that the predicted values were in relatively good agreement with the experimental data. Additionally, the obtained value for model desirability by clinoptilolite and pumice were 0.932 and 0.958, respectively. Overall, the obtained results indicate that both adsorbents reduced the bioconcentration of As (V) in the muscle tissue of common carp, but clinoptilolite was more effective.