Are soft tissues of urban rats good indicators of exposure to heavy metal pollution? A study conducted in one of the most polluted basins of Buenos Aires, Argentina
| Autor: | Olga Virginia Suárez, Diego Hancke, Mariel Alejandra Tripodi, Gerardo Rubén Cueto, Emiliano Muschetto |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Sentinel species Drainage basin Argentina 010501 environmental sciences Management Monitoring Policy and Law Structural basin 01 natural sciences Rivers Metals Heavy Biomonitoring Ecotoxicology Animals Cities Water pollution 0105 earth and related environmental sciences General Environmental Science Pollutant geography geography.geographical_feature_category General Medicine Metal pollution Pollution Rats Environmental chemistry Environmental science Water Pollutants Chemical Environmental Monitoring |
| Zdroj: | Environmental monitoring and assessment. 192(6) |
| ISSN: | 1573-2959 |
| Popis: | The overall goal of this work was to analyze the relationship between the concentration of lead in the kidney, liver, and stomach contents of rats captured in a polluted urban basin and the concentration of this metal in the environment, meteorological factors, and different intrinsic characteristics of the individuals. To this end, we determined the concentration of lead in the kidney, liver, and stomach contents of 133 Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) captured in the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin (Buenos Aires, Argentina). This basin is one of the most severe cases of water pollution in Latin America and metals like lead represent the most common chemical pollutants. Rats were trapped in nine sites with different soil and water lead concentrations, between 2014 and 2015. A positive relationship was found between lead concentration in the liver and kidney of R. norvegicus and the environmental concentration of this metal in water and soil. Although the remaining variables analyzed were also related to the lead concentration in soft tissues, they did not affect the association between the lead concentration in soft tissues and that in the environment. The lead concentration in the stomach contents was not related to any of the variables analyzed. Our results constitute the first study in an urban basin with a gradient of environmental lead concentration and suggest that the quantification of lead in the kidney and liver of rats can be used as an indicator of exposure to this metal within a large city. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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