Bioaccumulation of POPs in earthworms in real and artificial soils
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Citation | |
| Description | Bioaccumulation of pollutants in earthworms must be seriously considered in ecological risk assessment because it may lead to toxic effects and biomagnification of food chains. OECD artificial soil is used as standard in soil toxicity bioassays but the possibility of extrapolation to real soils is questionable. Bioaccumulation in earthworms Eisenia fetida was used in this study to investigate the differences in the bioavailability of selected POPs in real and artificial soils and its changes due to aging. Three natural soils were used with different total organic carbon content (TOC) - arable soil (1.8%), grassland soil (5.6%) and forest soil (12.6%), and three artificial soils were prepared to have the same TOC as these real soils. All soils were contaminated by persistent organic pollutants (phenathrene, pyrene, lindane, p,p-DDT, PCB 153) and bioaccumulation in Eisenia fetida was measured after 1, 14, 28 a 56 days. According to the results, it is clear that i) bioaccumulation of POPs was increasing with increasing TOC, ii) bioaccumulation of POPs was lower in artificial soils than in real soils although they had the same TOC, and iii) aging caused decrease in POPs bioavailability in the most soils and it also decreased the observed differences between soils. The results of this study confirm that not only organic carbon content (TOC) but also its character and other soil properties must be considered in extrapolation between soils, especially from artificial to real soil. |
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