A REPORT ON

BIOMAGNIFICATION

SUBMITTED BY:

HARSH RAWAT
ROLL NO: 10100EN022
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

DATE:
20/04/2011
BIOMAGNIFICATION
Biomagnification, also known as bioamplification or biological
magnification , is the increase in concentration of a substance, such as
the pesticide DDT, that occurs in a food chain as a consequence of:

 Persistence (can't be broken down by environmental processes)

 Food chain energetics
 Low (or nonexistent) rate of internal degradation/excretion of the
substance (often due to water-insolubility)
Biological magnification often refers to the process whereby certain
substances such as pesticides or heavy metals move up the food chain,
work their way into rivers or lakes, and are eaten by aquatic organisms such
as fish, which in turn are eaten by large birds, animals or humans. The
substances become concentrated in tissues or internal organs as they move
up the chain. Bioaccumulants are substances that increase in concentration
in living organisms as they take in contaminated air, water, or food because
the substances are very slowly metabolized or excreted.

Although sometimes used interchangeably with 'bioaccumulation,' an

important distinction is drawn between the two, and with bioconcentration,
it is also important to distinct between sustainable development
and overexploitation in biomagnification.

 Bioaccumulation occurs within a trophic level, and is the increase in

concentration of a substance in certain tissues of organisms' bodies due
to absorption from food and the environment.
 Bioconcentration is defined as occurring when uptake from the
water is greater than excretion (Landrum and Fisher, 1999)
Thus bioconcentration and bioaccumulation occur within an organism, and
biomagnification occurs across trophic (food chain) levels.

There are two basic terms we are discussing here.  Bioaccumulation refers
to how pollutants enter a food chain; biomagnification refers to the tendency
of pollutants to concentrate as they move from one trophic level to the next.
Here are some definitions of these terms:

Bioaccumulation:

increase in concentration of a pollutant from the environment to the

first organism in a food chain

Biomagnification:

increase in concentration of a pollutant from one link in a food chain

to another

We are concerned about these phenomena because together they mean that
even small concentrations of chemicals in the environment can find their
way into organisms in high enough dosages to cause problems.  In order for
biomagnification to occur, the pollutant must be:

1. long-lived
2. mobile
3. soluble in fats
4. biologically active

Biodilution is also a process that occurs to all trophic levels in an aquatic

environment; it is the opposite of biomagnification, thus a pollutant gets
smaller in concentration as it progresses up a food web.

Lipid, (lipophilic) or fat soluble substances cannot be diluted, broken down,

or excreted in urine, a water-based medium, and so accumulate in fatty
tissues of an organism if the organism lacksenzymes to degrade them. When
eaten by another organism, fats are absorbed in the gut, carrying the
substance, which then accumulates in the fats of the predator. Since at
each level of the food chain there is a lot of energy loss, a predator must
consume many prey, including all of their lipophilic substances.

For example, though mercury is only present in small amounts in seawater,

it is absorbed by algae (generally as methylmercury). It is efficiently
absorbed, but only very slowly excreted by organisms (Croteau et al., 2005).
Bioaccumulation and bioconcentration result in buildup in the adipose
tissue of successive trophic levels: zooplankton, small nekton, larger fish
etc. Anything which eats these fish also consumes the higher level of
mercury the fish have accumulated. This process explains why predatory
fish such as swordfish and sharks or birds like osprey and eagles have
higher concentrations of mercury in their tissue than could be accounted for
by direct exposure alone. For example, herring contains mercury at
approximately 0.01 ppm and shark contains mercury at greater than 1 ppm
(EPA 1997).

If a pollutant is short-lived, it will be broken down before it can become

dangerous.  If it is not mobile, it will stay in one place and is unlikely to be
taken up by organisms.  If the pollutant is soluble in water it will be
excreted by the organism. Pollutants that dissolve in fats, however, may be
retained for a long time.  It is traditional to measure the amount of
pollutants in fatty tissues of organisms such as fish.  In mammals, we often
test the milkproduced by females, since the milk has a lot of fat in it and
because the very young are often more susceptible to damage from toxins
(poisons).  If a pollutant is not active biologically, it may biomagnify, but we
really don't worry about it much, since it probably won't cause any
problems.

Current status
In a review of a large number of studies, Suedel et al. (1994) concluded that
although biomagnification is probably more limited in occurrence than
previously thought, there is good evidence that DDT,DDE, PCBs, toxaphene,
and the organic forms of mercury and arsenic do biomagnify in nature. For
other contaminants, bioconcentration and bioaccumulation account for
their high concentrations in organism tissues. More recently, Gray (2002)
reached a similar substances remaining in the organisms and not being
diluted to non-threatening concentrations. The success of top predatory-bird
recovery (bald eagles, peregrine falcons) in North America following the ban
on DDT use in agriculture is testament to the importance of
biomagnification.

Substances that biomagnify

There are two main groups of substances that biomagnify. Both are
lipophilic and not easily degraded. Novel organic substances are not easily
degraded because organisms lack previous exposure and have thus
not evolved specific detoxification and excretion mechanisms, as there has
been no selection pressure from them. These substances are consequently
known as 'persistent organic pollutants' or POPs.

Metals are not degradable because they are elements. Organisms,

particularly those subject to naturally high levels of exposure to metals,
have mechanisms to sequester and excrete metals. Problems arise when
organisms are exposed to higher concentrations than usual, which they
cannot excrete rapidly enough to prevent damage. These metals are
transferred in an organic form.
Novel organic substances

 DDT
 HCB
 PCBs
 Toxaphene
 Monomethylmercury

Inorganic substances

 Arsenic
 Cadmium
 Mercury
Mercury in fish

Fish and shellfish concentrate mercury in their bodies, often in the form

of methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound of mercury.[citation
needed]
 Fish products have been shown to contain varying amounts of heavy
metals, particularly mercury and fat-soluble pollutants from water
pollution. Species of fish that are long-lived and high on the food chain,
such as marlin, tuna, shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, northern
pike, and lake trout contain higher concentrations of mercury than others.

The presence of mercury in fish can be a health issue, particularly for

women who are or may become pregnant, nursing mothers, and young
children.

Classic example: DDT

DDT stands for dichloro, diphenyl trichloroethane.  It is a chlorinated
hydrocarbon, a class of chemicals which often fit the characteristics
necessary for biomagnification.  DDT has a half-life of 15 years, which
means if you use 100 kg of DDT, it will break down as follows:

Year Amount Remaining

0 100 kg
15 50 kg
30 25 kg
45 12.5 kg
60 6.25 kg
75 3.13 kg
90 1.56 kg
105 0.78 kg
120 0.39 kg

This means that after 100 years, there will still be over a pound of DDT in
the environment.  If it does bioaccumulate and biomagnify, much of the
DDT will be in the bodies of organisms.  DDT actually has rather low toxicity
to humans (but high toxicity to insects, hence its use as an insecticide).
Because it could be safely handled by humans, it was extensively used
shortly after its discovery just before WW II.  During the war, it was used to
reduce mosquito populations and thus control malaria in areas where US
troops were fighting (particularly in the tropics).  It was also used on civilian
populations in Europe, to prevent the spread of lice and the diseases they
carried.  Refugee populations and those living in destroyed cities would have
otherwise faced epidemics of louse-born diseases.  After the war, DDT
became popular not only to protect humans from insect-borne diseases, but
to protect crops as well.  As the first of the modern pesticides, it was
overused, and soon led to the discovery of the phenomena of insect
resistance to pesticides, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification.

By the 1960's, global problems with DDT and other pesticides were
becoming so pervasive that they began to attract much attention.  Credit for
sounding the warning about DDT and biomagnification usually goes to the
scientist Rachel Carson, who wrote the influential book Silent Spring (1962).
The silent spring alluded to in the title describes a world in which all the
songbirds have been poisoned.  Her book of course was attacked by many
with vested interests.  

I recently came across an essay from Jonathan Tolman at the Competitive

Enterprises Institute which completely misses the main point we get from
Silent Spring.  I guess the fact that people are still scared of the book 35
years later says something about its message.  Sure, scientific discoveries
have shown weaknesses in some of Carson's positions, but the basic
message that indiscriminate use of pesticides will have lasting and
detrimental effects remains strong.  The author's point in the CEI essay
seems to be that if nature makes dangerous chemicals, why should we be
concerned when humans make more dangerous chemicals and in huge
quantities, then spread them around out of airplanes so everyone gets a
dose?  It's amazing what people will say to make a buck.  I note that his on-
line resume lists a bachelor's degree in Political Science, presumably that
degree qualified him for work as an environmental and chemical analyst.
Biomagnification: how DDT becomes concentrated
as it passes through a food chain
The figure shows how DDT becomes concentrated in the tissues of
organisms representing four successive trophic levels in a food chain.

The concentration effect occurs because DDT is metabolized and excreted

much more slowly than the nutrients that are passed from one trophic level
to the next. So DDT accumulates in the bodies (especially in fat). Thus most
of the DDT ingested as part of gross production is still present in the net
production that remains at that trophic level.

This is why the hazard of DDT to nontarget animals is particularly acute for
those species living at the top of food chains.

For example,

 spraying a marsh to control mosquitoes will cause trace amounts of

DDT to accumulate in the cells of microscopic aquatic organisms,
the plankton, in the marsh.
 In feeding on the plankton, filter-feeders, like clams and some fish,
harvest DDT as well as food. (Concentrations of DDT 10 times greater
than those in the plankton have been measured in clams.)
 The process of concentration goes right on up the food chain from one
trophic level to the next. Gulls, which feed on clams, may accumulate
DDT to 40 or more times the concentration in their prey. This
represents a 400-fold increase in concentration along the length of
this short food chain.

There is abundant evidence that some carnivores at the ends of longer food
chains (e.g. ospreys, pelicans, falcons, and eagles) suffered serious declines
in fecundity and hence in population size because of this phenomenon in
the years before use of DDT was banned (1972) in the United States.

Case study: Long Island Estuary (Figure 22.1 in Cox)

Cox reports on a study done in 1967 on Long Island Sound.  The levels of
DDT in tissues of various animals in the sound showed bioaccumulation
factors of 800x, and  biomagnification factors up to 31 times.  When we look
at the whole food chain, the overall magnification is over 200,000x!

water to zooplankton: 800x  

zooplankton  to fish #1: 31x  

fish #1  to fish #2: 1.7x  

fish #2 to  gull: 4.8x  

overall:  202,368x

While DDT isn't particularly lethal (except to insects, and we need many of
them around), it has a number of sub-lethal effects.  Most prominent is the
phenomenon of shell-thinning in birds, particularly carnivorous birds
(raptors) - birds that eat other birds, birds that eat carrion (dead animals),
and birds that eat fish. Ospreys are one of the raptors that have been
adversely affected, as have bald eagles. Other fish-eating water birds have
been affected as well.  Because of the DDT, the shells are too thin to brood.  
Many populations have recovered following the banning of DDT in the US,
but migratory birds may be exposed to pesticides in other countries.
Recently, some studies have shown effects on sex ratios in some species of
birds, with the males becoming "feminized", presumably the result of
compounds in the environment mimicing the female hormone estrogen.

Heavy metals and other substances

DDT is not the only toxin to biomagnify.  All of the following have the
potential to biomagnify:

Substance Use & Problems Links

 insulators in
transformers
 plasticizer
PCB's  fire retardant  as airborne contaminants
 in sediments
polychlorinated
 biomagnifies  in the Mississippi River
biphenyls  impairs reproduction
 widespread in aquatic
systems

PAH's  component of
petroleum products
polynuclear aromatic  
hydrocarbons  carcinogenic

Heavy metals:  mercury from gold  from an interesting student

mining project
 mercury  many from metal  heavy metals
 copper processing in the Mississippi
 cadmium River - great source!
 may affect nervous
 chromium
system
 lead
 may affect reproduction
 nickel
  zinc
 tin (TBT or tributyltin)

 effects on coral reefs

 used in leaching gold
 used in fishing
 health information
Cyanide  proposed gold mine and its
effects
 toxic
 report of a spill of cyanide

 concentrated by
farming desert soils
 selenium at a wildlife
Selenium refuge in Wyoming
 reproductive failures
 toxic

     

Modern pesticides, such as carbamates and organophosphates, are "safer"

in that they are not persistent, one of the requirements for biomagnification.
They are, however, more toxic, and insects are developing resistance to
them.  It must be remembered that we use pesticides for more that making
pretty produce.  Pesticides are sometimes necessary to protect a basic food
supply and to protect human health.  The concept of integrated pest
management, or IPM, has been developed to improve control of pests while
decreasing the need for pesticides.  IPM uses a variety of methods to control
pests.  These include biological controls, and cultural practices such as
timing planting and harvest to avoid periods of peak activity by pest species,
and scouting to determine how big a problem the pests are actually causing
(rather than just spraying to prevent a problem that may never arise).
Economics are watched closely; pesticides are never used if the cost of the
pesticide would exceed the cost of the crops being saved (you'd be amazed at
how often people have spent more on pesticides than the crop was worth).
IPM relies heavily on information, and the internet is being used extensively.

Other pollutants:
Other pollutants of importance are plastics, radioisotopes (which may be
both toxic and radioactive!) and oil.  Plastics are eaten by many organisms
and can cause mechanical injury, strangulation, or starvation.
Radioisotopes can damage biological molecules, particularly DNA, leading to
cancer, other illnesses, or death.  Oil smothers aquatic organisms, cutting
them off from oxygen.  It can also infiltrate the insulating feathers of
seabirds (or fur of sea-going mammals) and cause them to die from
hypothermia (or cause them to sink). Oil spills are a serious problem
in marine environments.
Regulations:

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act

(FIFRA)
 1972
 requires registration of pesticides for specific uses

London Dumping Convention

 1972
 ratified by 64 countries
 bans deliberate discharge of various toxic or other wastes

International Convention for the Prevention of

Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)
 1988
 prohibits dumping of plastics at sea
 ratified by 40 countries