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Search results for: TROPHIC MODELS
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Environmentally Oriented Models and Methods for the Evaluation of Drug x Drug Interaction Effects
PublicationThis detailed review compares known and widely used methods for drug interaction estimation, some of which now have historical significance. Pharmaceutical application has been noted as far back as several thousand years ago. Relatively late in the 20th century, however, researchers became aware that their fate and metabolism, which still remain a great challenge for environmental analysts and risk assessors. For the patient’s...
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Bioaccumulation of metals in tissues of marine animals, Part II - metal concentrations in animal tissues
PublicationThe bioaccumulation of metals in an animal depends on a multitude of factors: biotic ones, like its body dimensions and mass, age, sex, diet, metabolism and position in the trophic web, as well as abiotic ones such as the distribution of metals in its environment, the salinity, temperature and pH of the water, habitat type, interactions with other metals. But it is diet that has the greatest influence on the accumulation of metals...
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Trophic Transfer of Mercury in a Temperate Marine Food Web, Southern Baltic Sea
PublicationMercury (Hg) is considered to be one of the most dangerous global environmental pollutants. The toxicity and bioavailabilityof Hg depend on its chemical form, and the greatest hazard is posed by the organomercurial compounds. Hg is introduced into the human body primarily through the consumption of fish and seafood. Despite numerous studies on Hg in marine organisms, there is still a gap in the knowledge on Hg uptake and...
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Mercury concentrations in Antarctic zooplankton with a focus on the krill species, Euphausia superba
PublicationThe Antarctic is the most isolated region in the world; nevertheless, it has not avoided the negative impact of human activity, including the inflow of toxic mercury (Hg). Hg deposited in the Antarctic marine environment can be bioavailable and accumulate in the food web, reaching elevated concentrations in high-trophic-level biota, especially if methylated. Zooplankton, together with
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Bacterial presence in polar regions associated with environment modification by chemical compounds including contaminants
PublicationMicrobes are omnipresent and diverse members of all biological communities. In marine and freshwater ecosystems, microorganisms form the base of the food chain supporting higher trophic levels. Even though, microbes generally are thought to live in warm regions of Earth, many of them develop in cold climates. Polar regions remain relatively protected from widespread anthropogenic disturbances, which is a consequence of its remoteness...
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Bioaccumulation of Metals in Tissues of Marine Animals, Part I: the Role and Impact of Heavy Metals on Organisms
PublicationHeavy metals contribute to the anthropogenic contamination of marine ecosystems. Some of them are essential to the life processes of organisms; others are toxic, even at low concentrations. They penetrate organisms via food, respiratory pathways or the skin. The extent to which metals penetrate organisms is measured by the bioconcentration and bioaccumulation factors and also by their transport between organisms at different trophic...
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Organomercury compounds in environmental samples: emission sources, toxicity, environmental fate and determination.
PublicationIn view of the specific properties of mercury and its capability of forming compounds that can be bioaccumulated and biomagnified at successive levels of the trophic pyramid, it has become necessary to gather detailed information on the sources of emission of this element into the environment and its fate there. Moreover, the increasing awareness of the relationship between the toxicity of mercury and its chemical form has sharpened...
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Phytoplankton communities of polar regions–Diversity depending on environmental conditions and chemical anthropopressure
PublicationThe polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic) constitute up to 14% of the biosphere and offer some of the coldest and most arid Earth's environments. Nevertheless several oxygenic phototrophs including some higher plants, mosses, lichens, various algal groups and cyanobacteria, survive that harsh climate and create the base of the trophic relationships in fragile ecosystems of polar environments. Ecosystems in polar regions are characterized...
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The use of bioassays in the analysis of environmental samples
PublicationToxicological tests are increasingly used as effective tool to complement the information obtained during the environmental monitoring. Moreover bioassays provide basic knowledge about the health effects of exposure to harmful factors associated with the environment. Toxicity tests might be a source of information about the content of pollutants in the sample, and the possibility of their interactions. They can be considered as...
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Selected issues related to the toxicity of ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents—a review
PublicationGreen Chemistry plays a more and more important role in implementing rules of sustainable development to prevent environmental pollution caused by technological processes, while simultaneously increasing the production yield. Ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DESs) constitute a very broad group of substances. Apart from many imperfections, ILs and DESs have been the most promising discoveries in the world of Green...
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Potential Toxic Effects of Airport Runoff Water Samples on the Environment
PublicationDespite the positive aspects of the intensive development of aviation, airports are considered large-scale polluters. Pollution caused by runoff water (stormwater) is one of the major problems related to airport operations. The aim of this study was to characterize the potential toxic impact on aquatic life from runoff water discharges from four international airports in Europe. Samples of stormwater were collected at airports...
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Occurrences, sources, and transport of organochlorine pesticides in the aquatic environment of Antarctica
PublicationWe review information on the concentration levels of organochlorine pesticides in the abiotic aquatic environment (in seawater, sea ice, surface freshwater, snow, firn, and glacial ice) and the organisms inhabiting those, in Antarctica. Particular attention is given to the environmental fate of these pollutants, which modifies their impact on the organisms living in the Antarctic. OCPs have been delivered to the Antarctic environment...
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Deep eutectic solvents microbial toxicity: Current state of art and critical evaluation of testing methods
PublicationDeep eutectic solvents (DESs) were described at the beginning of 21st century and they consist of a mixture of two or more solid components, which gives rise to a lower melting point compared to the starting materials. Over the years, DESs have proved to be a promising alternative to traditional organic solvents and ionic liquids (ILs) due to their low volatility, low inflammability, easy preparation, and usually low cost of compounds...
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Mercury in suspended matter of the Gulf of Gdańsk: Origin, distribution and transport at the land–sea interface
PublicationThe coastal regions of inland seas are particularly vulnerable to Hg pollution. An important carrier of toxic Hg in the marine environment is suspended matter originating from multiple sources. The present study was conducted in the Gulf...
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Effects of beach wrack on the fate of mercury at the land-sea interface – A preliminary study
PublicationSince the 1970s, the amount of aquatic plants and algae debris, called beach wrack (BW), has increased along the shores of industrialised regions. The strong ability of primary producers to accumulate pollutants can potentially result in their deposition on the beach along with the BW. Despite that, the fate and impact of such pollutants on sandy beach ecosystems have not been investigated so far. This study examines the fate...
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The interaction between bacterial abundance and selected pollutants concentration levels in an arctic catchment (southwest Spitsbergen, Svalbard)
PublicationPersistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been a topic of interest in environmental sciences for > 60 years. POPs in the Arctic have been investigated since the 1970s, when first atmospheric measurements revealed the presence of these pollutants in the polar regions. Major contaminant transport routes to the Arctic include atmospheric and oceanic transport, as well as inflow from rivers and sea ice. The sources of pollutants, such...
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Distribution and bioavailability of mercury in the surface sediments of the Baltic Sea
PublicationThe study aimed to determine the level of mercury (Hg) and its labile and stable forms in the surface sediments of the Baltic Sea. The work considers the impact of current and historical sources of Hg on sediment pollution, together with the influence of different environmental parameters, including water inflows from the North Sea. Surface sediments (top 5 cm) were collected in 2016–2017 at 91 stations located in different...
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Nilpotent singularities and chaos: Tritrophic food chains
PublicationLocal bifurcation theory is used to prove the existence of chaotic dynamics in two well-known models of tritrophic food chains. To the best of our knowledge, the simplest technique to guarantee the emergence of strange attractors in a given family of vector fields consists of finding a 3-dimensional nilpotent singularity of codimension 3 and verifying some generic algebraic conditions. We provide the essential background regarding...