Total mercury (Hg) was determined in 10 liver and 16 muscle samples from fin whales sampled by JARPAII in the period from 2005/2006 to 2010/2011. In addition PCBs, DDTs, HCHs, HCB and CHLs were determined in two blubber samples from fin whales sampled in 2010/2011. Mean concentrations of total Hg in liver and muscle samples were 0.052 and 0.021 (ppm wet wt.), respectively. Mean concentrations o...

Domoic acid of macroalgal origin was used for traditional and medicinal purposes in Japan and largely forgotten until its rediscovery in diatoms that poisoned 107 people after consumption of contaminated mussels. The more severely poisoned victims had seizures and/or amnesia and four died; however, one survivor unexpectedly developed temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) a year after the event. Nearly a...

Commercial feeds for aquaculture and catfish samples were collected from the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam, for determination of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and selected persistent organochlorines, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and its metabolites (DDTs), chlordane-related compounds (CHLs), hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCHs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB). The most ab...

There is extensive literature documenting the bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the marine environment, but relatively little data are available on contamination pathways in aquaculture systems such as that for farmed salmon. In recent years,the salmon industry has grown significantly in Europe. This study reports on the determination of a wide range of polychlorinated bipheny...

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals are well known environmental pollutants. Even though numerous studies have been carried out to assess human exposures to these compounds, there is still a lack of data on humans from developing countries, especially in underprivileged children. The objective of this study was to assess the exposure to POPs and heavy metals in children from D...

Historical use of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in the Republic Moldova could pose a potential risk for aquatic environment due to persistence, bioaccumulation and toxic properties these environmental pollutants. However, knowledge on concentrations legacy OCPs is limited. In this study, surface sediment from two main rivers; Dniester (8 sites, n = 15) Prut (6 12), tributary Bîc (11 11) R?ut...

Organic contaminant and total mercury concentrations were compared in four species of lamniform sharks over several age classes to examine bioaccumulation patterns and gain insights into trophic ecology. Contaminants found in young of the year (YOY) sharks were assumed to be derived from maternal sources and used as a proxy to investigate factors that influence maternal offloading processes. YO...

Pacific angel sharks (Squatina californica) are a benthic elasmobranch that occupy intermediate trophic level positions in coastal food webs. Angel sharks' life history characteristics make them susceptible to accumulating high amounts of contaminants. Four angel sharks were opportunistically captured in southern California and their liver and uterine contents were analyzed for PCBs, DDTs and o...

In the last years, there is a trend towards network and multimedia applications to be implemented in portable devices. These applications usually contain complex dynamic data structures. The appropriate selection of the dynamic data type (DDT) combination of an application affects the performance and the energy consumption of the whole system. Thus, DDT exploration methodology is used to perfor...