[100 years of drinking water regulation. Retrospective review, current situation and prospects].

There is considered the history of the development of legislative requirements to the regulation of the quality of drinking water in different countries and international organizations during the period from 1912 to the present time. In terms of comparative analysis there is analyzed the current state of regulatory frameworks of the Russian Federation, WHO, EU, Finland, the UK, Singapore, Australia, Japan, China, Nigeria, the United States and Canada in the field of providing favorable conditions of population drinking water use. There has been noted the significant progress in standardization of the content of the biogenic elements and chemical pollution of drinking water in the absence of uniform requirements to the composition and properties of drinking water globally, that is bound to the need to take into account the national peculiarities of drinking water supply within the separate countries. As promising directions for improving regulation of drinking water quality there are noted: the development of new standards for prioritized water pollution, periodic review ofstandards after appearance of the new scientific data on the biological action of substances, the use of the concept of risk, the harmonization of the normative values and the assessment of the possibility of introduction into the practice the one more criterion of profitableness of population water use--the bioenergetic state of the water.

Mutagenic effect of thallium and mercury salts on rodent cells with different repair activities.

The mutagenic activity of thallium carbonate and mercury chloride was estimated by the HAP chromatography and virus reactivation methods in cultures of embryo cells of mice (CBA and C57Bl/6 strains) and rats and by the dominant mutation frequency in rats. Thallium carbonate induced single-stranded DNA breaks. The induction of DNA breaks correlated with the rate of virus reactivation and the mutability of vaccinia virus in the cell cultures studied. DNA breaks in experiments with mercury chloride occurred at much lower concentrations as compared with these of thallium carbonate. The rate of vaccinia virus reactivation in cells treated with mercury chloride was reduced, whereas the level of virus mutagenesis did not differ from the control. In the dominant lethal test the mutagenic activity of thallium carbonate was higher than the mutagenic activity of mercury chloride.