Congener-Specific Patterns and Toxic Assessment of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Resident and Migratory Birds from Southern India and Lake Baikal in Russia

Abstract

Concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), including non-, mono-, and di-ortho congeners, were determined in migratory and resident birds collected from India and Lake Baikal in Russia. In the 11 different species examined, total PCBs concentrations were in the range of 11-4500 ng/g (wet wt). IUPAC 105, 118, 138, 153, and 180 were the predominant congeners in almost all the birds. White-cheeked tern collected from India and common tern collected from Lake Baikal showed high PCBs concentrations of 4400 ng/g (wet wt) and 4500 ng/g (wet wt), respectively, and accumulated relatively high ratios of penta-CBs (IUPAC 118, 105, 99). Toxic equivalents (TEQs) of non- and mono-ortho PCB congeners in birds collected from India and Lake Baikal were in the range of 1.5-56 and 2.8-370 pg/g wet wt, respectively. Toxic assessment results led by calculated TEQs of the transfer to eggs from female birds revealed that TEQs in most of migratory and resident birds were comparable to the lowest observable effect level (LOAEL) of chicken which is a highly sensitive species against dioxin-like compounds. Calculated transfer TEQs to eggs of common tern collected from Lake Baikal in autumn, however, exceeded the LOAEL of CYP1A induction in bald eagle embryos and ED50 of that in pheasant embryos, suggesting that embryo toxicity by coplanar PCBs in some avian species breeding in Lake Baikal is possible.

Age-Dependent Bioaccumulation of Organochlorine Compounds in Fish and their Selective Biotransformation in Top Predators from Lake Maggiore (Italy)

“…In particular congener 101 seems to be highly selectively metabolized by P. cristatus (relative composition change from 12% to 2%). Congeners 153 and 138 were also predominant in bird eggs collected in different part of the world, together with congeners 180, 110 and 118 (Focardi et al 1988;Scharenberg 1991;Mora 1996;Guruge and Tanabe 1997;Kunisue et al 2003).…”

Cell death mechanisms in GT1-7 GnRH cells exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls PCB74, PCB118, and PCB153

“…Given that PCB74, PCB118, and PCB153 are congeners frequently found in environmental (Lake et al, 1995), wildlife (Kunisue et al, 2003), and human lipid and serum samples (Freels et al, 2007; Park et al, 2007; Larsen et al, 1994; Lanting et al, 1998), results from this study are relevant for ecological exposures. As the human body burden of the three PCB congeners used in this study varies considerably by individual and tissue, and it is difficult to extrapolate from in vitro to in vivo , the doses in our study were chosen to approximate human levels.…”

DFT-Based Prediction of Bioconcentration Factors of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Fish Species Using Atomic Descriptors

“…The best twelve models for k = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 (eqns. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] (12) The regression summary of these equations has also been presented in Table- ' and lowest value of 's' among the rest equations. All the descriptors of this model have positive coefficient values indicating that these have direct relationship with the bioconcentration factors, except Q 1 and Q 6' , which have a negative coefficient values indicating that these have inverse relationship with bioconcentration factors.…”

“…Prediction of bioconcentration factors (BCFs) [1][2][3][4] of the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) [5], a group of persistent organic pollutants [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] by QSAR modeling [19] using molecular descriptors were made time to time to increase the probability of success and reduce the time and cost in exploring the toxicological and ecological characteristics of molecules [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. In this work, for the first time, we have used atomic descriptors: partial atom charges and HOMO densities [36] at various sites of polychlorinated biphenyls to predict their bioconcentration factors.…”