Abstract
The individual toxicity and bioaccumulation of cadmium, copper and zinc for common carp juveniles was evaluated in a direct comparison in two experimental setups. First, fish were exposed for 10 days to different metal concentrations in order to link metal bioaccumulation to LC50 values (concentration lethal to 50% of the animals) and incipient lethal levels (ILL, concentration where 50% survives indefinitely). Accumulated metals showed a positive dose dependent uptake for cadmium and copper, but not for zinc. Toxicity was in the order cadmium>copper>zinc with 96h LC50 values for cadmium at 0.20±0.16 μM, for copper at 0.77±0.03 μM, and for zinc at 29.89±9.03 μM respectively. For copper, the 96h exposure was sufficient to calculate the incipient lethal level and therefore 96h LC50 and ILL levels were the same, while for cadmium and zinc 5 to 6 days were needed to reach ILL resulting in slightly lower values at 0.16 μM and 28.33 μM respectively. Subsequently, a subacute exposure experiment was conducted, where carp juveniles were exposed to 2 equitoxic concentrations (10% and 50% of LC50 96 h) of the three metals for 1, 3 and 7 days. Again a significant dose-dependent increase in gill cadmium and copper, but not in zinc, was observed during the 7-day exposure. Copper clearly affected sodium levels in gill tissue, while zinc and cadmium did not significantly alter any of the gill electrolytes. The overall histopathological effects (e.g. hyperemia and hypertrophy) of the metal exposures were mild for most of the alterations. Our study showed that copper an cadmium (but not zinc) showed dose dependent metal accumulation, however this bioaccumulation was only correlated with mortality for cadmium. Metal specific alterations were reduced gill sodium levels in copper exposed fish and oedema of the primary epithelium which typically occurred in both levels of zinc exposure.
Highlights
Anthropogenic input of metals remains one of the major threats to aquatic animals and entire aquatic ecosystems
Maximum allowable concentrations (MACs) for cadmium are given in the Directive
Five month old common carp (Cyprinus carpio) juveniles were obtained from the fish hatchery at Wageningen University, The Netherlands and kept in reconstituted freshwater made from deionized water (Aqualab, VWR International), supplemented with 4 salts (VWR Chemicals): NaHCO3 (1.14 mM), CaSO4.2H2O (0.35 mM), MgSO4.7H2O (0.5 mM), KCl (0.05 mM) to reach moderately-hard water, as defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency [63]
Summary
Anthropogenic input of metals remains one of the major threats to aquatic animals and entire aquatic ecosystems. In Belgium, where this study was conducted, the latest report mentioning total concentrations of cadmium, copper and zinc measured by the Flemish environmental agency (VMM) in 2014, ranged respectively from 4.45e-4–0.03 μM (0.05–3.37 μg/L), 0.02–0.54 μM (1.27–34.32 μg/L) and 0.12–5.05 μM (7.84–330.17μg/L) [5], ranking some of these rivers in Class V. Exceedances of these levels in both surface an drinking waters have been reported worldwide [6, 7, 8]
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