Bioavailability of organic chemicals in the aquatic environment.

1. Bioavailability in the aquatic environment can be defined as the external availability of a chemical to an organism. The availability of sediment-sorbed chemicals to organisms is a particularly important aspect of this phenomena. 2. Various experiments described in the literature, such as toxicity and accumulation experiments, have investigated the influence of suspended sediment in the aqueous phase on bioavailability. 3. The bioavailability of a chemical appears to be influenced by the chemical, the sediment, and the organism being examined. Thus, describing "the bioavailability" of a chemical in the aquatic environment is not a simple process.     

Preliminary investigations on the influence of suspended sediments on the bioaccumulation of two chlorobenzenes by the guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

In this study the uptake by guppies (Poecilia reticulata) of 1,2,3-trichlorobenzene (TCB) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) from sediment-free water was compared with uptake in the presence of suspended sediment. The results show that the influence of suspended sediment on the uptake of chlorobenzenes varies with test compound. For TCB uptake was not influenced by the presence of suspended sediment. This is probably due to the large amount of the chemical which is dissolved relative to the amount which is present in the sorbed state. For the more hydrophobic HCB, the concentration found in the fish from the system with suspended sediment was significantly higher than in fish from the control experiment.