Biological Magnification

The increase in pollution over the past century is of little surprise to many. Mankind has made great strides in such a short time, however, with these great strides, there are consequences. With the advancement of technology and the ability to harvest different sources of energies, there has been a rise in the amount of wastes and pollution. Actions that most people don’t even consider, such as driving their car and using fertilizers are mundane actions that may not seem like much, but they too, contribute to pollution. Eventually, many types of pollution and waste make their way to the ocean. Therefore, pollution has a significant impact on the ocean and marine life.

In the academic journal written by Ronald A. MacGillivray the purpose was to find out information about the Delaware River and how polluted it is. The research was done over a four-year period to find out if lethal toxins were coming out of tributaries (MacGillivrary et al., 2011). The research was done by a sampling procedure. The researchers would go out into the field and collect samples on a weekly basis depending on the weather to see how the toxic levels in the river were from 16 different locations (MacGillivrary et al., 2011). At the end of the four years that the research was taken the results were conclusive that the tributaries that led into the Delaware River were found to be at normal toxic water level rates (MacGillivrary et al., 2011). The pollution levels found were normal with a few exceptions depending on the water content of the day (MacGillivrary et al., 2011).

First, DDT had shown to affect birds and their populations. Affected birds include the American bald eagle, brown pelican, peregrine falcon, and osprey. Insects that consumed DDT are eaten by predators, and those animals are eaten by other predators until large amounts DDT eventually reach bird. DDT had been shown to cause bird eggs to develop a thin shell, causing the embryo inside the egg to die when its parent tries to sit on it to incubate the egg. This had caused many North American and European birds of prey species populations to plummet into endangerment. Additionally, DDT had also been the cause of the deaths of many marine species, including plankton, sea shrimp, and crayfish. These creatures were poisoned from DDT-infected streams and creeks feeding into the ocean. Finally, it was revealed by research that DDT accumulates in many organisms. DDT is only soluble, meaning that it only dissolves in fats and oils, so it bioaccumulates in the fat tissues of many organisms, including humans. This DDT concentration is also transferred between animals through the food web until it is at its highest concentration, in the apex predators. A study in 2005 had also shown that DDT was present in almost all humans. The half life of DDT in humans in six to ten

A conceptual framework was developed that incorporated characteristics of chemicals, agricultural landscapes, and aquatic ecosystems that interact to influence exposure. From this framework, the workgroups designed a tiered system for the risk assessment process in which the assessment progresses from a deterministic assessment to probabilistic assessments of increasing complexity. Each tier includes several experimental and analytical options that reduce uncertainty and provide more complete descriptions of the aquatic environment (Environmental Proection Agency, 2012).

This helps put toxins into exposure classes. This allows scientist to determine what level the toxins are lethal, or what levels may help prevent undesired medical conditions, such as cancer. These levels are used for regulatory purposes as well, to minimize exposure to harmful toxins and their effects on human health and the environment (Hodgson, 2010).

What information does this study provide about the reversibility of each of the toxins? Explain your response.

The purpose of this experiment was to deter whether or not the simulated sample given to us, was too toxic for the fish in the Columbia River to survive in. Through our calculations, we have found that our simulated sample’s toxicity is too low to actually cause a full-on fish kill scenario. This a critical result in this experiment because while the toxicity level may not be high enough to kill the population of fish at this moment in time, it could quite possibly become a major problem in the future. The knowledge that we were able to determine from our data allows us to brainstorm prevention methods for fish-kill itself because the future of both fish and humans are at stake.

Series 1 represents paraoxon. Cricket mortality was 35% when exposed to a concentration of 1x10-10M. In a 1x10-8M solution there was a 45% susceptibility of death. In a 1x10-6M solution there was 59% mortality. In a 1x10-4M solution

Frogs. This research is about Toxin Frogs of animal that will tell us how that works. For

Many other species worldwide use this same safety mechanism or warning system, to sustain life, that being their own life and that of their predators. As in the cases such as the poison arrow or dart frog, these beautiful brightly colored creatures have been found to have over 100 toxins in the

Alkali poisoning or avian botulism is caused when birds eat a toxin that is created by a bacteria called clostridium botulinum. Clostridium botulinum toxin is produced when warm soil with the bacteria in it has some sort of protein and no oxygen. When animals that are affected by this toxin, birds, for example, ingest it, the animal gets paralysis. The animal does not have to ingest the toxin directly to suffer the effects. For example, since maggots are not affected by clostridium botulinum, if a bird were to eat a minimum of 2 infected maggots, the bird gets avian botulism. Between the years of 1900 and 1920, there were two outbreaks of avian botulism, causing over 3,000,000 birds to die. It was that there should be a place to protect the animal as well as the rapidly diminishing marshes in Bear River. Now there are tens of thousands of healthy birds and other animals, that migrate through or live in the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

One of the greatest challenges faced by Skippers is the identifying of suspected toxins that cannot directly be associated with an health-related illness. Several toxins can adversely affect the crew’s comfort even at very low levels of exposure whereby reducing the vessel’s performace and overall commradery. In some cases, it may be the combined exposure to several compounds which otherwise singularily would not have the same effect on the crew members. These types of comfort-related issues can be precursers to unknown underlying problems within or near the vessel that may eventually lead to health-related issues within the crew. This is important for the Skipper to understand because if these comfort-related issues that are allowed

One of the big challenges of the ecotoxicological studies is understanding the adverse effects of complex mixtures to organisms (Eggen et al., 2004). Recently, there was an increase of research evaluating the combination of chemical substances in laboratory and field experiments (Bueno-Krawczyk et al., 2015; Schoenfuss et al., 2016).

A substantial contract has been presented to a Research Institute for the supply of 500mg of a marine toxin extracted from a marine dinoflagellate by the 1st of October 2016. Due to strict confidentiality clauses within this contract there are no identifying particulars, of either the algae, toxin, or company, within this project documentation. This project must also be completed with enough time remaining to purify the algae and extract the toxin in a pure form. The existing algae culture room can only hold 24 x 24 litre algae grow bags. On average the algae will produce 7mg of toxin per 30 litres, which is 0.233mg per litre. At this rate the contract requiring 500mg of toxin cannot be fulfilled within the given timeframe. By upgrading the algae culture room to hold 44 x 30L algae grow bags a total of 308mg can be produced per batch. Therefore, only 2 batches will be required to fulfil the contract. This will allow for enough time for the toxin to be purified and delivered within the timeframe stipulated in the contract. However, the purification and extraction of the toxin is not covered in this project documentation. This culture room will be capable of supporting 1,000 litres or more of algae cultures and will be state-of-the-art by being connected to sensors capable of altering pH in the seawater automatically by controlling the air and CO2 gases, as well as notifying staff if the conditions change in a manner that is detrimental to the algae. This culture

The goal in this experiment is to determine the magnification and focal point when it came to using convex and concave lenses. The meaning of a focal point from the lens is when as the light is directly hitting the lens, whether it is concave or convex, it creates an image where the light rays are altered by the lens. As they are altered by the direction, one is able to see if the light rays converge or diverge. A converging lens consists of the light rays that are considered to be positive because of the focal length. And diverging lens is considered to be negative because of the focal length as well. When the light converges, it consists of the lights rays that meet at a focal point, which will then bounce off to different directions. To where the light meets at a focal point it is known as the term real. When the light diverges, the rays spread out in different directions as they pass through the lens. To where the light rays diverge, the exact point is known as virtual. With this data in hand, it is very crucial to use these terms in order to visualize and see exactly what is going on when the light passes through the lenses. In theory, convex lenses are to purposely to have the light rays to meet at a focal point. An example would be when one would use a magnifying glass using the sun light rays, which contains heat energy, which is then used to use the focal point to heat up an object. For a diverging lens, the theory behind it consists of the image being spread out