Current state of knowledge on biological effects from contaminants on arctic wildlife and fish
Creators: name: Dietz, Rune
name: Letcher, Robert J.
name: Desforges, Jean-Pierre
name: Treu, Gabriele
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2019
Subjects: Artenbestand
Biopharmazeutikum
Exposition
Gefährdete Arten
Gesundheitliche Bewertung
Tierökologie
Toxizität

description: Since the last Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) effort to review biological effects of the ex-posure to organohalogen compounds (OHCs) in Arctic biota, there has been a considerable number of new Arcticeffect studies. Here, we provide an update on the state of the knowledge of OHC, and also include mercury, ex-posure and/or associated effects in key Arctic marine and terrestrial mammal and bird species as well as in fishby reviewing the literature published since the last AMAP assessment in 2010. We aimed at updating the knowl-edge of how single but also combined health effects are or can be associated to the exposure to single compoundsor mixtures of OHCs. We also focussed on assessing both potential individual as well as population health impactsusing population-specific exposure data post 2000. We have identified quantifiable effects on vitamin metabo-lism, immune functioning, thyroid and steroid hormone balances, oxidative stress, tissue pathology, and repro-duction. As with the previous assessment, a wealth of documentation is available for biological effects inmarine mammals and seabirds, and sentinel species such as the sledge dog and Arctic fox, but information for ter-restrial vertebrates and fish remain scarce. While hormones and vitamins are thoroughly studied, oxidativestress, immunotoxic and reproductive effects need further investigation. Depending on the species and popula-tion, some OHCs and mercury tissue contaminant burdens post 2000 were observed to be high enough to exceedputative risk threshold levels that have been previously estimated for non-target species or populations outsidethe Arctic. In this assessment, we made use of risk quotient calculations to summarize the cumulative effects ofdifferent OHC classes and mercury for which critical body burdens can be estimated for wildlife across the Arctic.As our ultimate goal is to better predict or estimate the effects of OHCs and mercury in Arctic wildlife at the in-dividual, population and ecosystem level, there remain numerous knowledge gaps on the biological effects of ex-posure in Arctic biota. These knowledge gaps include the establishment of concentration thresholds forindividual compounds as well as for realistic cocktail mixtures that in fact indicate biologically relevant, andnot statistically determined, health effects for specific species and subpopulations. Finally, we provide future per-spectives on understanding Arctic wildlife health using new in vivo, in vitro, and in silico techniques, and providecase studies on multiple stressors to show that future assessments would benefit from significant efforts to inte-grate human health, wildlife ecology and retrospective and forecasting aspects into assessing the biological ef-fects of OHC and mercury exposure in Arctic wildlife and fish. © 2019 The Authors.