SEOUL, Korea ¶ Nov 21, 2011 (Whowired) --Korea has decided to rely on water flea (or Daphnia magna) to provide cleaner and safer water to its people. The municipality of Seoul announced today it has introduced "ecological toxicity management system" applying water flea in its attempts to implement much rigorous management of its water recycling center which is responsible for public water supply zones.

Daphnia is a small algae-grazing crustacean found in water all over the world and an important food source for fish. Intriguing is that the water flea could help boost efforts to test the toxicity of chemicals or environmental pollutants in water. Water flea is very sensitive to varying degree of water toxicity and thereby useful to check how much the water sampled could be polluted.

With unknown and new kinds of pollutants in water surging at a fast clip, the previously used system using chemicals run into limitations; to overcome the shortcomings, many nations including the US introduced a 'eco-toxicity management system' and Korea begins to follow the suit from this year.

The use of Daphnia magna as an experimental animal for such purposes is advantageous in many respects. D. magna is specified to be used in the OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals, Tests No. 202 "Daphnia sp., Acute Immobilisation Test and Reproduction Test" and Test No. 211 "Daphnia magna Reproduction Test". Test No. 202 is a 48 hour acute toxicity study, where young Daphnia are exposed to varying concentrations of the substance under test and the EC50 determined.

Alastair Kim (press@whowired.com)