PARENT SESSION
TP3 - PAHs
Chair: Hodson, Peter1, 1 Queen's University, Kingston, ON
2:10 PM to 5:30 PM - Tuesday, 19 November 2002
Room Ballroom H
(428) Uptake of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by the freshwater mussel, Elliptio complanata.
Thorsen, Waverly*,1, Cope, W. Gregory1, Shea, Damian1, 1 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
ABSTRACT- A flow-through study measuring the uptake of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) by the freshwater mussel, Elliptio complanata, was conducted to determine bioconcentration factors (BCF) for 36 PAHs including alkyl homologues. Mussels were exposed to the water-accommodated fraction of a mixture of creosote and Alaskan North Slope crude oil in triplicate tanks for 20 days. During the exposure period, water samples were collected daily to monitor aqueous PAH concentrations. Mussels from each tank were collected at zero, 12, 24, 48, 96, 240, and 480 hours, extracted and analyzed to determine body residues of PAHs. Based on individual analyte uptake curves, we determined that steady state conditions were reached very rapidly− in the first 24 hours of exposure. This is in contrast to previous studies using sediment as the source of PAH, where much longer times were required to reach steady state. We believe this is a result of slow desorption of PAH from the sediment. A plot of log BCF values versus log Kow for individual PAH analytes yielded the steady-state bioconcentration regression equation: log BCF = 0.749 (log Kow) − 1.060 [r2 = 0.8832]. This equation is similar to other equations derived for marine bivalves. Our work provides important information on the uptake of PAHs by freshwater mussels, allows estimation of aqueous concentrations from mussel residue data, and is, to our knowledge, the first report for Elliptio complanata. This work extends previous studies with marine bivalves using only a few PAHs, to a much broader suite of PAH and alkyl homologues, and supports the use and extrapolation of steady state bioconcentration regression equations to this much larger suite of PAHs.
Key words: bioconcentration, freshwater mussel, steady state regression, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon