Does Recovery Between Exposures Decrease the Toxicity of Zinc to Fathead Minnows?

Overview

Heavy metal pollution in water sources has detrimental effects on aquatic life. Everything from the amount of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the water to the pH of the water can affect how bioavailable and therefore toxic the heavy metal is in the water (van Genderen et al., 2009). The Biotic Ligand Model was created to predict toxicity of metals (di Toro et al., 2001). The Biotic Ligand Model considers many water quality criteria that affect bioavailability, but it does not include one important aspect of poisons in water: exposure time (Colvin et al., 2021). This experiment included single pulse and double pulse exposure and ran for a total of 21 days to model real life events of rainfall and to give adequate time for long-term effects to display (Colvin et al., 2021). Single pulse treatment was 24 hours of zinc and double pulse was a total of 24 hours of zinc with a 24-hour gap at the 12-hour mark. While the data did not end up being statistically significant, the apparent trends validate the hypothesis that giving a 24-hour break in zinc exposure gives time for recovery in the fathead minnows. With the apparent trends, episodic exposure can be seen as a contributing factor to organism mortality since it allows the organisms to recover from the same amounts of zinc exposure. These results should be considered in future studies and environmental regulations as they validate that episodic exposure does have an effect on mortality.

Competition history

• JSHS 2023 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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