Abstract
Here we compare bioaccumulation factors in marine organisms to partition ratios in marine debris for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and polychlorinated biphenyls. Both organochlorines are synthetic persistent organic pollutants emitted into the environment since the beginning of the last century in approximately equal amounts. Their vast use and dispersion have resulted in approximately similar median concentrations of the two organochlorines in some pelagic organisms, namely in the liver and muscle tissue of fish. Molluscs, on the other hand, show higher median uptake of PCBs (median = 2.34 ng/g) than of DDTs (median = 1.70 ng/g), probably reflecting more localized conditions. We found that the bioaccumulation factors can be several orders of magnitude higher than the partition ratios. For instance, the median concentrations of organochlorines in the different matrices of fish, birds, and mammals are between one to four orders of magnitude higher than those found in marine debris, when lipid-normalized; or up to two orders of magnitude when measured as wet-weight. But, in molluscs, bioaccumulation/partition equals unity, which agrees with previous studies using passive samplers. Future research should focus on reducing sources of uncertainty by 1) homogenization of chemical procedures; 2) better assessment of chemical partition equilibrium between water and polymers in environmental conditions; 3) use of (multi)polymer passive samplers better aimed at mimicking uptake of specific living tissues.
Highlights
The performance of passive samplers to predict concentrations of persistent contaminants in organisms other than bivalves was considered for some time as unclear (USEPA, 2012a; ICES, 2013)
The concentration of the substance in marine organisms is represented by Ms,o,m,b, and in marine pellets by Ps, with s the substance (DDTs, or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)), o the organism, m the matrix, and b the indication whether the concentrations are reported as wet weight or lipid-normalized
Data for lipid-normalized DDTs in the ICES database is available for a large number of different organisms and matrices, but statistical analysis showed that they could be aggregated into four statistical populations (Kruskal-Wallis test, K-W χ2 (3) 1399.1, p < 2 × 10−16, Dunn post hoc test, p < 0.01—see Supplementary Material for detailed statistical results), MDDT, o, m, lipid
Summary
The performance of passive samplers to predict concentrations of persistent contaminants in organisms other than bivalves was considered for some time as unclear (USEPA, 2012a; ICES, 2013). More recent studies have found good agreement between concentrations in passive equilibrium samplers (PES) and those in fish (Cerveny et al, 2016; Rusina et al, 2017). This opens the possibility of finding similar results for other organisms, allowing biota monitoring to be supplemented by PES and improving contaminant modelling and risk assessment at the higher trophic levels. We explore this biota-PES relationship using a synoptic approach using large environmental databases for the northeast Atlantic region, as opposed to the most frequent of local case-study analysis (ICES, 2013). Two hydrophobic organochlorine compounds (OCCs) were chosen: dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), analysed in marine
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