RAPD Assessment of In Vivo Induced Genotoxicity of Raw and Treated Wastewater to Albino Rat

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was applied to assess the potential genotoxicity of wastewater to albino rats. Cluster analysis using the Euclidean distance resulted in two clusters; one includes the control rats and the treated wastewater-injected rats (join at a distance of 0.57). The other one includes the rats injected with the raw wastewater (joins the first cluster at a distance of 0.6). Results confirm the ability of both raw and treated wastewater to in vivo induce genotoxic effects to rats. This demonstrates that the treatment process does not remove all mutagens found in raw wastewater completely. Consequently, the reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation poses health and environmental hazard. Therefore, we recommend genotoxicity testing be used to monitor the quality of wastewater effluents, in addition to the traditional tests used. Besides, hazardous chemicals from laboratories should be separated and treated differently. Finally, RAPD test is a reliable one that can be applied to evaluate in vivo genotoxic effects of chemicals.