Sea Urchins Helping To Ensure Clean Water Returned To Mobile Bay 

Degussa Among The First To Use Tiny Creatures To Probe For Possible Toxicity  

MOBILE, Ala., May 4, 2007 – A creature that first appeared on earth some 500 million years ago is today helping the world’s leading specialty chemicals company to ensure the water it treats after usage won’t damage the local ecosystem.  

“Sea urchins, a close relative of the starfish, help Degussa monitor the potential toxicity of its wastewater,” says Bill Klutz, Degussa's Environmental Compliance Manager at its Mobile, Alabama facility. “Degussa was one of the first companies to perform bioassays – a technique for determining the concentration of wastewater versus the potential toxicity of a substance by measuring its effect on a living organism – in the wastewater it returns to Mobile Bay. We first began this type of testing decades ago to continually monitor the waste water effluent.”  

Sea urchin bioassay is one of the most sensitive measurements of this type known, he adds. Sea urchins are used as a model to test for environmental effects because they're very sensitive; different environmental factors that can adversely affect the fertilization process are known immediately. The creatures, which resemble underwater hedgehogs, are one of only a few animals that have a similar embryonic lifecycle when compared to humans, making their reproductive systems of interest to environmentalists such as Klutz and Chris Bolling, Degussa's Environmental Lab Manager.  

Degussa’s staff carefully collects cells from male sea urchins, which are not even a living organism yet, and exposes these single cell organisms, to the company’s waste water for one hour. “After 60 minutes, we collect eggs from female sea urchin, and we’ll put them into the waste water along with the sperm,” explains Bob Ridgeway, Degussa’s Biolab Specialist. “Thirty minutes later, we artificially stop the fertilization process. Then we take a sample of that, put it under a microscope, and look at the eggs for a fertilization ring. If there’s a ring formed around the egg of a sea urchin, that’s the initial indication of no toxicity being present.”  

Ridgeway looks for the rate of fertilization of about 100 eggs. “The percent fertilized directly collates back to the percentage of surviving sperm,” he says. “The lower number of sperm survived the lower number of fertilized eggs. Our researchers take those numbers, plug it into a statistics program and can then tell at what concentration our waste water is toxic to sea urchin sperm cells.  It’s primarily a preventative measure. We constantly monitor our operations.”  

Degussa’s laboratory analysis skills are constantly tested. Every year, he adds, the US Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) and Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) send an unknown sample to the lab.  “They say, ‘Tell us how toxic it is’,” says Ridgeway. “They want to check and see if we know what we’re doing. We’ve passed all their tests.”  

Initially, the ADEM visited the Degussa plant site, looked at the processes involved, and what chemicals are used at the plant site and what is potentially in the effluent and determined what byproducts might be discharged into the water. The ADEM then issued a permit on what the company might discharge. “Strictly adhering to that permit is crucial,” he adds.  

“For a facility to discharge wastewater, it needs to constantly analyze the water to make sure there isn’t a problem,” says Ridgeway. “Bioassays don’t look at any one particular thing, but look at the overall toxicity. A bioassay can’t tell you why it happened or exactly what it is. It just says that there is something toxic that deserves further action.”  

When the company first started doing bioassays, it immediately found a problem. “We couldn’t figure it out,” says Ridgeway. “We went back to various discharge points and narrowed it down to one thing. It was the chlorine that was added to the city’s drinking water. It’s a biocide. It keeps bacteria down but it kills the sea urchins, so we ‘treat out’ the chloride that the city of Mobile adds.”  

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has written protocols for bioassays, he adds, and the subjects must be approved organisms. Degussa not only uses sea urchins but also a fish species called the sheepshead minnow.  

“We always want to go the extra step, which is why we do significant analysis on nutrients,” says Ridgeway. “We know that the biggest contribution to a potential problem is nutrients. Nitrates and phosphates, for example, cause algae blooms, which are huge growth spurt of algae. This can cause problems, particularly with the dissolved oxygen concentration in water, which can kill fish. Our testing system is designed to immediately alert us to a problem before it gets that far.”  

In this day and age, continues Degussa vice president and Mobile site manager Tom Bates, “when companies are more concerned than ever with the bottom line Degussa continues to go the extra mile, because we want to be a good corporate citizen. We not only work in the Mobile community, but we live here too.”  

With approximately 700 workers, the Degussa Mobile site is one of the area’s largest employers. This site manufactures a wide range of products that create the essentials necessary to enjoy a better standard of living today and tomorrow.    

Degussa: Creating Essentials™
Degussa -- a wholly owned subsidiary of the RAG Group -- is the global market leader in specialty chemicals. Our business is creating essentials: innovative products and system solutions that make indispensable contributions to our customers’ success. In fiscal 2005, our 44,000 employees worldwide generated sales of $13.9 billion and operating profits (EBIT) of $1.1 billion.