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3D - Exposure and effects of environmental contaminants in marine organisms (TUP/180) Evaluation of toxic organic substances mobility from surface coastal sediment based on bioassay and chemical analyses. Pazdro, Ksenia1, Szpilewska, Hanna1, Wegrzyn, Grzegorz1, Pempkowiak, Janusz1, 1 Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, a, Poland ABSTRACT- Coastal sediments in marine environments are known to contain high concentrations of persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides. Most of these contaminants are bioavailable and have genotoxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic properties. These properties should be strongly affected not only by concentration itself but also by contaminants mobility from the sediment. The presented study investigates the mutagenicity and POPs contamination with regards to their distribution among the fractions of sediment, differing in the physicochemical properties. The sediment sample was collected in the coastal zone of the Gulf of Gdansk (Baltic Sea) near the mouth of Vistula, the largest Polish river. The mutagenicity of the sample was evaluated basing on a new assay for detection of mutagenic pollution of marine environments, based on the series of genetically modified Vibrio harveyi strains. A subsample of the sediment was utilised to determine PAHs, polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs and selected pesticides concentrations. It was found that most POPs are associated with fine grained fraction of sediment. After normalization to organic matter content, the coarse fraction moved to be, by far, the most abundant with POPs. Among the tested organic contaminants the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons class was the dominant one in all investigated samples. Four strains of Vibrio harveyi were utilized to assess the mutagenic activity. Frequency of mutation measured after 4 h of incubation in the presence of the tested fractions has been shown to be highest in the case of coarse sediment fraction. It was concluded that POPs bound to coarse fraction organic matter exhibit mutagenic activity by far exceeding that of the other solid fractions. Key words: organic contaminants, Baltic Sea, mutagenicity, Vibrio harveyi strains |
