Arsenic, mercury, and other toxic chemicals have been found in the bodies of whales and dolphins. The alarm comes from a new study
Arsenic, mercury and other toxic chemicals have been found in the bodies of whales and dolphins. The alarm comes from a new American study after researchers, through mass spectrometry, noticed concentrations of contaminated and histopathological findings from the combustion of fossil fuels and mining.
Dolphins and whales stranded along the southeastern coast of the United States are poisoned by toxic substances. Specifically, as reported in the study, bottlenose dolphins had significantly higher average concentrations of lead, manganese, mercury, selenium, thallium and zinc and lower average concentrations of NPE, arsenic, cadmium, cobalt and iron compared to sperm whale samples.
In female bottlenose dolphins, mean arsenic concentrations were significantly higher and iron concentrations were significantly lower than in adult males.
"These toxic chemicals come into the ecosystem from burning fossil fuels and mining," said Alistair Dove, vice president of research and conservation at Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.
Toxic substances that end up in the food chain and that from the marine ecosystem also arrive on our tables. "You start with small organisms and then you have higher and higher concentrations," said Annie Page-Karjian, study author, clinical veterinarian and research professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
When dolphins and whales eat fish with concentrations of chemical substances, toxic elements enter their bodies. Dolphins feed on a large variety of fish, shrimp, jellyfish and octopus, and herring and mackerel on the east coast of the United States. Some of the same fish are also commonly consumed by humans.
"If humans eat fish that contain too much arsenic and mercury, these metals can poison the liver and other organs or cause neurological damage to the brain and nervous system," the study said.
The researchers used liver and fat samples of 11 different animal species to test dozens of different substances between 2012 and 2018. The animals were all dead specimens stranded on the coasts of North Carolina and Florida.
Anthropogenic toxins are released into marine ecosystems through various sources. The amount of waste released into the environment has grown, in particular, plastics are transformed into marine debris, slow to biodegrade and end up suffocating fish, turtles and destroying the marine ecosystem.
“Humans can help save the ocean from the amount of toxic substances in the marine environment. Part of that includes reducing polluted runoff and chemicals in waterways from fossil fuels, as well as reducing the use of single-use plastics, ”Page-Karjian said.
In the world there will be 710 million tons of plastic pollution by 2040, despite efforts to reduce waste, the study says. Many plastic items contain dangerous phthalates.
“If we reduce the use of fossil fuels, we can slow climate change and put fewer pollutants into the ocean. This applies to mercury, which very often comes from coal-fired power plants and even plastics, which are ultimately produced from natural gas. "
Fonte: Frontiers/ CNN
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