Contaminants in white croakers from the Southern California Bight

Date

1982

Authors

Jenkins, K.D.
Brown, D.A.
Hershelman, G.P.
Meyer, W.C.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Academic Press

Abstract

The papers in this volume were presented at a syposium entitlte Physiology and Pollution of Marine Organisms held at the University of South Carolina on November 30-December3, 1981. The abstract of the paper of interest: A growing body of evidence suggests that fish make use of specific intracellular mechanisms to sequester or detoxify a wide range of environmental contaminants. In the case of trace metals, fish, like other vertebrates, appear to utilize the metal-binding protein methallothionein....Methallothioneins appear to play a role in the metabolism of the essential trace metals Zn and Cu where they may function in the regulation of Zn uptake and act as an non-toxic reservoir for excess quantitites of these metals. .... The ability to detoxify trace metals makes it difficult to determine the toxicological significance of sublethal levels of tissue trace-metals in marine organisms. This has lead to the suggestion that the toxicological impact of trace metals may be evaluated most effectively by examining the relative distribution of trace metals between methallothioneins and potential sites of toxic action, such as the high molecular weight pool of the cytosol. ....We report here on the results of a preliminary study designed to examin the feasibility of using cytosolic metal distributions to evaluate the potential toxicity of ambient metal levels in fish obtained from the environment.

Description

pgs. 177-197

Keywords

contamination, percoid fisheries

Citation