Abstract
The study of the response of a marine organism to a toxic element in solution in sea water generally takes two factors into account: the concentration of the toxic element in sea water (C) and the lethal time (LT) of the whole or a part, generally 50%, of the contaminated population. The toxicity of the element established by these two factors is expressed by LC/sub 100/ or LC/sub 50/ (LC = Lethal concentration) for a given time, generally 24, 48 or 96 hours. This notion does not take into account two other factors which seem to be essential in the study of the response of an organism to a toxic element: the level of accumulation of the element in the dead organism (A = Accumulation) and the speed of accumulation of this element by the organism (SA). In order to demonstrate what are the relationships between these different factors, C, LT, A and SA, experiments were carried out taking the mussel Mytilus edulis as test organism and copper as test toxic element. The results of this study show that the toxicity of copper towards mussels is regulated by a two steps reaction where these different parameters are taken into account.more » The difference is made between the total accumulation and the lethal accumulation.« less
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