Detection of waterborne mutagens and characterization of chemicals in selected Galveston sites after an oil spill

In the summer of 1990, a collision of barge tankers occurred in Galveston Bay and approximately 500,000 gal of oil were spilled into the Bay. Several sites in Galveston Bay were sampled 5-7 d after the oil spill. We characterized the pollutants chemically and detected the mutagenicity. We designed the present study to examine the applicability of our technique from two points of view. One was to determine if there was a correlation between mutagenicity of blue rayon-adsorbed compounds and the level of known mutagens detected in water samples from the same site. The other was to certify if the sampling technique provided a convenient method for handling water samples collected at remote sites