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 PARENT SESSION
49 - Predicting Pollution Effects in the Field
8:00 AM to 6:30 PM, Tuesday, 14 May 2002
Exhibition Area
(49-01) The structural effects of two brominated flame-retardants on a pond zooplankton community.
Pirzadeh, Pardis*,1, Woin, Per1, Wendt-Rasch, Lina1, 1 Ecology Building, Lund university, Lund, Sweden
ABSTRACT- Brominated flame-retardants are a group of chemicals that have raised considerable attention to scientists. They have been found in the environment, in organisms and even in human breast milk. To investigate the toxicity of the substances to the environment an exposure experiment was performed with replicated plankton community enclosures in a pond mesocosm. The substances deca-bromodiphenyleter (BDE-209) and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) were tested at nominal concentrations of 50, 100 and 400  g/l for HBCDD and 5, 25 and 50 g/l for BDE-209. Daphnia longispina was negatively affected at all exposure concentrations of both HBCDD and BDE-209. HBCDD also had a negative effect on copepods at the lowest concentration. The decline in grazers in HBCDD exposed systems resulted in an increase in chlorophyll-a concentration and the abundance of the rotifer Keratella quadrata. The adverse effects observed in this study are obvious at much lower concentrations than in previous experiments. Reported LC50-values for the cladoceran Daphnia magna were 15 mg/l and 40.6 g/l for HBCDD and BDE-209 respectively. The effect concentrations found in this experiment correspond to several of those reported as predicted environmental concentrations (PECs). The results from this investigation may therefore signal an ecotoxicity risk for natural plankton communities exposed to brominated flame-retardants in real world scenarios.
Key words: plankton community, ecotoxicity, brominated flame-retardants, structural effects
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