Antimony and Heavy Metals Accumulation in Some Macroinvertebrates in the Yesilirmak River (N Turkey) near the Sb-mining Area

Abstract

All aquatic invertebrates accumulate trace metals in their bodies whether or not these metals are essential to metabolism. Antimony is a trace element with quite low content in the earth’s crust about 0.2 ppm. Antimony is considered geochemically immobile (Ainsworth et al. 1991). Nevertheless, mobility and the biological role of Sb, its behavior and transfer into food chain, are not well known (Baroni et al. 2000). Total Sb concentrations in natural waters have been reported to be in the range of 0.01–1.1 mg/L (US EPA 1996). Acutely toxic concentrations of Sb are in the range of 22–36 mg/L fish (Lin and Hwang 1998), and 9–20 mg/L for daphnids (Anderson 2000), although the toxicity database is small. All these concentrations are above the typical range of concentrations in mine effluents. Therefore, Sb is unlikely to contribute appreciably to effluent acute toxicity. The aquatic toxicity database for Sb and the knowledge of species effluents from Sb mine are limited. Antimony accumulation is not often studied for aquatic invertebrate and macrophytes (Sanders and Cope 1968; Murphy et al. 2002). A decline in biodiversity of macroinvertebrate communities has generally related to metal pollution (Hill et al. 1997; Mori et al. 1999) but Sb is not often studied in contrast to Zn, Cu and Cd (Mori et al. 1999). Metals such as Fe, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb are known to be especially high in association with mining activities (Axtmann et al. 1997; Pestana et al. 1997; Quinn et al. 2003). Aquatic invertebrates are often excellent bioindicators of trace element pollution in aquatic ecosystems (Cain et al. 1992). They take up trace elements directly from water and sediments and diet and serve as a tropic link to higher food chain organisms such as fish and aquatic birds (Wayland and Crosley 2006). This work presents total Sb, Cd, Pb, Zn and Cu accumulation in water, sediments, some macroinvertebrate from active antimony mining area. We were interested in comparing heavy metal levels between mine impacted and non impacted sites. Also, this study addresses the impact of Sb-mining on biological components of macroinvertebrate of this part of Yesilirmak River.