Heavy Metals in Garra gotyla , Cyprinus carpio and Cyprinion watsoni from the River Panjkora, District, Lower Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

This study was conducted in the River Panjkora, Pakistan, in order to assess the level of heavy metals accumulated in the liver, kidneys, gills and muscle tissues of three highly consumed fish species by the local community, Garra gotyla, Cyprinus carpio and Cyprinion watsoni. The heavy metals including manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and nickel (Ni) were determined in the collected fish specimens through an atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Level of heavy metals significantly varied depending upon tissues type and fish species. Cyprinus carpio accumulated highest concentration of heavy metals, followed by Garra gotyla while Cyprinion watsoni accumulated least concentration of heavy metals. All the three species displayed significant differences in level of accumulated heavy metals. The order of accumulation in tissues was gills<muscles<kidney<liver. Cd and Ni were not detected in all collected specimens while Mn was not detected in the tissues of Cyprinion watsoni collected from the reference site.

A State‐of‐the‐Art Review of Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Pollution

“…Pollutants accumulating in food chains through biomagnification have been particularly well‐documented in marine mammals (Kuhnlein et al 1995; Binnington et al 2016), seafood (Donatuto et al 2011), riverine fish (Ullah et al 2016), birds (Bidleman et al 2010), large mammals (Doyle et al 2012), and caribou (Ostertag et al 2009), and IPs in many areas depend heavily on these foods. Several studies have shown that global warming may increase pollution levels in fish and marine mammals by increasing rates of ecological mobilization and biomagnification (Jenssen 2006; Dudley et al 2015).…”