Abstract
According to industrialization, increased toxic chemicals discharge has been causing water pollution. Especially domestic sewage is a major source of water pollution. Sixty percent of the total wastewater discharged is domestic sewage. Self-purification capacity of rivers and streams is drastically reduced by the emission of domestic sewage, industrial wastewater and livestock wastewater. Although domestic sewage is managed by implementing standards and regulations, toxicity effect of domestic sewage to humans and the environment is not yet clearly understood. In this study, by using daphnia magna, the ecotoxicity of domestic swage was assessed. Cl, Cu, Pb, COD, T-N, DO, pH and residual chlorine were investigated as background concentrations. The experiments were conducted with water samples obtained from three local sewage treatment plants. The experiment results indicated that higher level of toxicity corresponds to the higher pollution concentrations. The higher level of combinations of background concentrations such as heavy metals leads to the worse ecotoxicity. Especially, the Cu concentration affects the TU value.