Marine Pollution: Current Status, Impacts, and Remedies

De-Sheng Pei

• Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789811412691
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Marine Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

While oceans are vast, they represent a fragile resource that must be protected if we want to protect our livelihoods and our planet. Marine pollution has been a topic of concern for a long time, and it has recently attracted the attention of scientists, environmentalists, economists, politicians and journalists in mainstream media,. Besides providing food, transportation routes and other resources, the oceans serve as a heat absorbing sink which offsets the extreme heating effects of climate change, but only to a limited degree. Pollution in marine environments such as the oceans, poses a threat to coastal communities by affecting the fauna and flora in the environment and the health of the nearby population. This has a disruptive effect on the health and economy of these communities. Marine Pollution: Current Status, Impacts and Remedies emphasizes the limitations of marine resources that relevant environments provide. Readers will find chapters on methods to assess pollution as well as important information for identifying, measuring, and remediating various pollutants. The book also covers some known pollutants (heavy metals, organic pollutants, microplastics) and ways to manage these substances. Other issues covered in the book include problems caused by invasive species, and the ecological problems caused by pollutants which affect local fauna and flora. This book will prove to be a useful resource for students, researchers, and policymakers, who are working in environmental science, marine conservation and allied fields.

Ecotoxicology of Heavy Metals in Marine Fish

Lizhao Chen, Sen Du, Dongdong Song, Peng Zhang, Li Zhang^*

Guandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

Abstract

Heavy metal pollution in the marine environment has been realized and developed to an important environmental problem since the 1950’s. In the polluted areas, marine organisms are exposed to high level of heavy metals via different routes, accumulate them in the body, and may have harmful effects from molecular level to population level. Heavy metals in marine fish have been taken much attention due to human consumption and health. Marine fish accumulate heavy metals depending on the concentration and species of metals in water and food, and trophic level, ionic physiology, feeding habits (carnivorous, herbivorous or omnivorous), habitats (demersal, pelagic, or bento-pelagic), growing of fish, and other factors. Consequently, the concentrations of heavy metals in marine fish vary considerably among species and different sites, which can be well explained by the biokinetic model. High levels of heavy metals in marine fish can induce various acute and chronic toxic effects, including behavioral changes, organ pathological changes, biochemical and physiological changes, hematological changes, and so on. Heavy metal-contaminated fish consumption will pose threats to organisms at higher trophic level and humans. Here, we review the occurrence and chemistry of heavy metals in the marine environment, bioaccumulation, and toxicity of heavy metals in marine fish, and the general risk assessment of heavy metal in fish to human health.

Keywords: Heavy Metals, Bioaccumulation, Toxicology, Risk Assessment.

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^* Corresponding author Li Zhang: Guandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China; Tel/Fax: [phone]; E-mail: [email protected]

OCCURRENCE AND CHEMISTRY OF HEAVY METALS

Heavy metals are elements having atomic weights between 63.5 and 201, and a specific gravity greater than 5.0 (Fu and Wang, 2011). They include copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), selenium (Se), silver (Ag), aluminum (Al), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), arsenic (As) and so on. Among multitudinous classifications proposed, heavy metals are popularly divided into essential and non-essential metals for life by aquatic toxicologists (Wood et al., 2011, Wood et al., 2012). Indeed, the small quantities

of these heavy metals, like Cu, Fe, Co, Mo, Zn, Ni, Mn, and Cr, are essential for organisms of proteins owing to their participation in metabolic reactions as cofactors or integral parts especially enzymes, but above the permissible limit, they can be hazardous to organisms. Some other heavy metals including Al, Cd, Pb, As, and Hg are not essential but toxic to organisms due to their interaction with biomolecules and interfere with corresponding functions. Heavy metals in the environment come from both natural and anthropogenic sources (Morel and Price, 2003). For many metals, anthropogenic inputs have exceeded the natural inputs currently. Heavy metals enter the seawater via river runoff, wind-blown dust, diffusion from sediments, hydrothermal vent inputs, and many anthropogenic activities (Fu and Wang, 2011). With large-scale industrial activities and fast urbanization processes, anthropogenic activities have released very substantial amounts of heavy metal into seawater and exerted tremendous pressure on marine ecosystems. Metal pollution in estuaries, bays, and coastal areas is often considered as a “traditional” environmental problem, but with such rapid industrialization and often “uncontrolled” releases of industrial wastes, it has led to further deterioration in marine environments and become a new challenge (Li et al., 2012, Pan and Wang, 2012).

The concentrations of heavy metals vary both horizontally and vertically through the world’s oceans, determined by the relative rates of supply and removal (Donat and Dryden, 2001, Morel and Price, 2003). Beside concentrations, the chemical speciation of heavy metals is vital for physiology and toxicology (Donat and Dryden, 2001, Fu and Wang, 2011). The metals in seawater are mainly in the dissolved or particulate forms. It is generally recognized that the particulate metals exhibit negligible toxicity and bioavailability to aquatic organism relative to the dissolved metals. Dissolved metals can exist in different oxidation states, such as Fe(II)/Fe(III), Mn(II)/Mn(IV), Cr(III)/Cr(VI), Cu(I)/Cu(II), and As(III)/As(V), and chemical forms, such as free ions, organometallic compounds, organic complexes (e.g. metals bound to proteins or humic substances), and inorganic complexes (e.g., metals bound to Cl^-, OH^-, HCO₃^-, SO₄^2-, etc.), depending on red...

Table of contents

• Welcome
• Table of Content
• Title
• BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS LTD.
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• List of Contributors
• An Introduction to the Recent Perspectives of Marine Pollution
• Sampling Pelagic Marine Organisms
• Macroelements and Microelements in Marine Ecosystems: An Overview
• Sulfur, Aluminum, Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Mercury, and Nickel in Marine Ecosystems: Accumulation, Distribution, and Environmental Effects
• Pollution Dynamics of Organic Contaminants in Marine Ecosystems
• Monitoring of Organic Pollutants: PCBs in Marine Ecosystem
• An Overview of Pollution Dynamics along the Pakistan Coast with Special Reference of Nutrient Pollution
• Ecotoxicology of Heavy Metals in Marine Fish
• Effects of Microplastics in Marine Ecosystem
• Toxicity Evaluation in Flora and Fauna Exposed to Marine Pollution
• Marine Medaka (Oryzias melastigma) as a Model System to Study Marine Toxicology
• Problems of Invasive Species: A Case Study from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andaman Sea, India
• Problems of Invasive Species
• Disturbance and Biodiversity of Marine Protected Areas
• Monitoring of Environmental Indicators and Bacterial Pathogens in the Muthupettai Mangrove Ecosystem, Tamil Nadu, India
• Marine Microbial Mettle for Heavy Metal Bioremediation: A Perception
• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): Occurrence and Bioremediation in the Marine Environment
• Tackling Marin Pollution: Final Thoughts and Concluding Remarks