Waste Disposal in the Marine Environment: 2. Biological Availability of Organic Contaminants to Marine Invertebrates

The literature on the bioavailability of sediment-adsorbed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls is reviewed. These poorly-soluble, non-polar organic pollutants, when sorbed to natural sediments, have a limited bioavailability to benthic marine invertebrates.Bioaccumulation factors (concentration in tissue/concentration in sediment) range from about 0.1 to 11. Bioavailability of these compounds from sediments seems to be directly related to the aqueous solubility of the compound, the concentration of the compound in the sediment, and the sediment grain size, and inversely related to sediment organic carbon content and animal size. The bioaccumulation factor of an organic pollutant from sediment is proportional to the ratio of the animal tissue-water distribution coefficient to the sediment-water distribution coefficient.