Bioaccumulation and depuration of chromium in the selected organs andwhole body tissues of freshwater fish Cirrhinus mrigala individuallyand in binary solutions with nickel
PL. RM. Palaniappan , S. Karthikeyan
DOI:
Received February 25, 2008,Revised May 22, 2008, Accepted , Available online
Volume 21,2009,Pages 229-236
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Contamination of aquatic ecosystems with heavy metals has been receiving increased worldwide attention due to their harmful e ects
on human health and other organisms in the environment. Most of the studies dealing with toxic e ects of metals deal with single
metal species, while the aquatic organisms are typically exposed to mixtures of metals. Hence, in order to provide data supporting
the usefulness of freshwater fish as indicators of heavy metal pollution, it has been proposed in the present study to investigate the
bioaccumulation and depuration of chromium in the selected organs of freshwater fingerlings Cirrhinus mrigala, individually and in
binary solutions with nickel. The results show that the kidney is a target organ for chromium accumulation, which implies that it is also
the “critical” organ for toxic symptoms. The results further show that accumulation of nickel in all the tissues of C. mrigala is higher
than that of chromium. In addition, the metal accumulations of the binary mixtures of chromium and nickel are substantially higher
than those of the individual metals, indicating synergistic interactions between the two metals. Theoretically the simplest explanation
for an additive joint action of toxicants in a mixture is that they act in a qualitatively similar way. The observed data suggest that C.
mrigala could be suitable monitoring organisms to study the bioavailability of water-bound metals in freshwater habitats.
