The Pros And Cons Of Bioaccumulation

The various activities of human beings affect adversely all environments where the plants, the animals and the humans live (Kaya et al., 2002). The numbers of chemicals which are the most important group of environmental pollution were limited to a few thousand until the beginning of this century and the majority part of that was constituted by plants, animals and mineral origin accounted for natural ingredients. The production of the chemicals which were 7 million tons in 1950 is estimated to reach 400 million tons today. On the one hand consists of hazards, on the other hand increasing quantities of usage of requirements for the modern living that has increased the importance of the determination of threshold limits of chemicals before and after the production (Utku, 2008).
Bioaccumulation: Bioaccumulation (Fig.1) is defined as the increase in concentration of substances in an organism or a part of that organism. Bioaccumulation occurs when an

2) is the ratio between the uptake of the chemicals from food and their clearance. Bio-magnification is also called Bio-amplification. It is simply the increase in concentration of a substance in a food chain, not an organism (Sijm et al., 1992). Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are compound that bio-magnify. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are chemical substances that persist in the environment. These substances bio-accumulate through the food web and pose risk not only to humans but also other living organisms because of their adverse effects. These pollutants consist of pesticides (such as DDT), industrial chemicals (such as polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs) and unintentional by-products of industrial processes (such as dioxins and furans). In essence, bio-magnification is similar to bioaccumulation but is descriptive of higher level biological processes, not individual. DDT has a half-life of 15 years, which means if you use 100 kg of DDT; it will break down as