Hematological Indicators of Hydrobionts as a Biomarker of Anthropogenic Pollution of the Aquatic Environment

Abstract

The problem of preserving the environment, in conditions of intensive development of natural resources, is becoming more and more important every year. In many regions of the world, significant problems with water supply are already noticeable as a result of the quantitative and qualitative depletion of water resources through their irrational use. In the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of tons of organic compounds such as PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), OCPs (organochlorine pesticides), and inorganic (heavy metals) were produced and partially released into the environment. Water bodies have often been and still are the collectors of many of the listed substances. In civilized countries, the population is seriously concerned about the problem of possible remote and long-term adverse effects of pollutants on the environment in general and aquatic ecosystems in particular. <i>Objective:</i> Monitoring the state of aquatic ecosystems and searching for methods to effectively assess the level of pollution and identify its sources. To date, the main assessment of water quality is usually carried out on the basis of chemical-analytical methods. And these methods determine only the presence and amount of chemical elements in the tested water samples, but cannot determine the specifics of the formation of the quality of the tested water samples, due to the very large number of possible combinations of chemical compounds in aqueous solutions, including the behavior of anthropogenic compounds and the natural vulnerability of aquatic ecosystems to the combined effects of their pollution. <i>Method:</i> Assessment of the state of organisms living in changing environmental conditions makes it possible to reveal the patterns of responses at different levels of organization (molecular, cellular, organismal), predict the occurrence of diseases, and identify specific biological effects and the etiology of diseases. In this regard, the possibility of using biological markers as tools for assessing water quality is of particular interest. As a <i>result</i> of the research, biomarkers have been developed for assessing the quality of the aquatic environment, based on hematological parameters and characteristics of morphological and functional changes in blood cells of aquatic organisms. A change in the blood formula and an increase in the number of cells with nuclear abnormalities when exposed to water samples are shown, for example from the Desna and Dnieper rivers. <i>Conclusion:</i> The results obtained can be extrapolated to a certain extent to human health, given the fact that river water is one of the main sources of drinking water for the population of many countries of the World.