Publikationsdatenbank

Correlations between hair and tissue mercury concentrations in Icelandic arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) (2018)

Art

Zeitschriftenartikel / wissenschaftlicher Beitrag

Autoren

Treu, Gabriele

Krone, Oliver

Unnsteinsdóttir, Ester Rut

Greenwood, Alex D (WE 5)

Czirják, Gábor Á

Quelle

The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man

Bandzählung: 619-620

Seiten: 1589 – 1598

ISSN: 0048-9697

Sprache

Englisch

Verweise

DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.143

Pubmed: 29107366

Kontakt

Institut für Virologie

Robert-von-Ostertag-Str. 7-13
14163 Berlin
+49 30 838 51833
virologie@vetmed.fu-berlin.de

Abstract / Zusammenfassung

Monitoring organic pollutants in wildlife is a common approach to evaluate environmental health, chemical exposure and to make hazard assessments. However, pollutant concentrations measured from different tissue types among studies impede direct comparisons of levels and toxicity benchmarks among species and regions. For example, mercury (Hg) is a metal of both natural and anthropogenic origin which poses health risks for marine and arctic biota in particular. Although hair is recognized as the least invasive sample type for Hg exposure measurement in wildlife, measurements in previous studies have used different tissues among individuals and species. This lack of tissue type consistency hinders cross study comparisons. Therefore to systematically evaluate the use of hair in ecotoxicological studies, total mercury (THg) concentrations measured from hair were compared to values obtained from liver and kidney in 35 Icelandic arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus). THg concentrations varied considerably among tissues with hair and kidney levels generally lower than in liver. Nevertheless, significant correlations among tissue types were observed. THg values in hair were predictive for liver (R2=0.61) and kidney THg levels (R2=0.51) and liver values were a good predictor of THg in kidney (R2=0.77). We provide further evidence that non-invasively collected hair samples reflect the THg levels of internal tissues. We present equations derived from multiple linear regression models that can be used to relate THg levels among tissue types in order to extrapolate THg values from hair to soft tissues. Using these equations, we compare the results of previous studies monitoring THg levels in different tissues of arctic foxes from various regions of the Arctic. Our findings support that hair is a suitable sample matrix for ecotoxicological studies of arctic predators and may be applied in both wildlife welfare and conservation contexts for arctic vulpine species.