A bioassay using the luminescent bacterium Vibrio-qinghaiensis sp.-Q67 associated with solid-phase extraction (SPE) was developed for evaluating the variation of ecotoxicity along with the reduction of organic substances in a domestic wastewater treatment plant employing an oxidation ditch process. With effective elimination of the interference from all inorganic substances by the SPE operation, the ecotoxicity of the water, as expressed by the toxicity impact index, TII(50) (%) after a model-based regression and parameter transformation, was found to decrease from 50.51% in the influent to 25.84% after the grid chamber and then to 1.38% for the secondary effluent, but the final chlorination stage resulted in a slight TII(50) increase. Of the two typical tertiary treatment processes, coagulation could not assist further reduction of the ecotoxicity while carbon adsorption could reduce the TII(50) to as low as 0.96%. When enhanced primary treatment was conducted, the influent TII(50) could be directly reduced to 7.36%. A good correlative relationship was found between the total COD concentration and the TII(50) value at different stages of the wastewater treatment process. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.