Aquatic Toxicology

Prepared by:
M. Tahir Rafique

Introduction & Brief History

 What is aquatic
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toxicology?
• Aquatic toxicology is ‘the study of the effects of
anthropogenic chemicals, and natural chemicals,
materials and activities on aquatic organisms, at various
levels of biological organization, from sub-cellular through
whole organisms, and to populations, communities and
ecosystems’ (adapted from Rand, 1995).
• Aquatic toxicology is the field that studies the effect of
pollutants, compounds, and nutrients on the plants and
animals that live in the water. The effects may be small
scale and affect individuals, or they may be ecosystem-
wide.
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History of Aquatic
Toxicology

• As long as human populations remained

small, anthropogenic influences on aquatic
environments remained small and local.
• Any effects were in the vicinity of bigger
settlements.
• Probably the first larger-scale aquatic
environmental issue resulted from lead water
pipes that were used in large Roman towns.
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• Later, a major aquatic environmental problem was

generated when sewage systems were built and people
started using toilets (WCs).
• Consequently, contaminated household water, urine, and
feces were disposed of directly to surrounding waters.
• Although cleaning measures are nowadays taken for most
large human settlements, at least in Europe, Japan, North
America, and Australia, the eutrophication caused by
fertilizing compounds from human settlements, industry,
agriculture (including the production of livestock), and
aquaculture is a major threat to inland and coastal waters.
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• Because gut bacteria can cause epidemics of

intestinal diseases (e.g. cholera), they are still a
major component to be determined when water
quality criteria are established.
• The water quality framework is defined for
Europe in the Water Policy Framework
Directive (WFD) of 26 February 1997, and for
the USA in the Clean Water Act and the Water
Quality Act, of which the latter is from 1987.
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• Upon industrialization, acid rain became an issue. By the

end of 1800s, coal burning was already causing acid rain
and consecutive acidification of poorly buffered rivers and
lakes in the British Isles.
• The immediate solution was to increase the height of
chimneys. In the latter part of the twentieth century, this
caused oxides of sulfur and nitrogen to be transported
from central Europe and Britain to Scandinavia.
• The acid rain generated came down into poorly buffered
streams and lakes in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, where
whole fish stocks, especially of salmonids, were wiped out
(see Figure 1.1 for the mechanism of water acidification).
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FIGURE 1.1 Schematic representation of the formation of acid rain. The smoke contains oxides
of sulfur and nitrogen (SOx and NOx), which react with atmospheric water to form H2SO3, H2SO4,
and HNO3. These acids are a part of precipitation and acidify waterways.
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• Similar acidification was observed in some parts of Canada,

where it was caused mainly by coal burning in the industrial
areas of the USA.
• As clear environmental disturbances were observed and could
be tied to specific polluting sources, in this case sulfur-containing
coal (and oil), and as the problems were observed in the aquatic
systems of democratic industrialized European and North
American countries, it was soon required that, first, the use of
fuels containing much sulfur be curbed, second, the use of coal
in energy production be decreased, and, third, the smoke be
cleaned, removing sulfur from the gases.
• As a result of these measures, acid rain as an environmental
problem is now all but forgotten in Europe and North America.
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• Healthy fish stocks have returned to many formerly acidified

lakes.
• However, globally, acidification of freshwater is of major
importance, especially in Asia, where none of the measures
that are required in Europe to prevent pollution are so far
applied.
• Until the latter part of the twentieth century, wastewater was
virtually always uncleaned.
• Whenever the vicinity of effluent pipes became fouled, the
solution was to increase the length of the effluent pipe. It was
customary to talk about “the self-cleaning capacity of
waters.”
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• Because of the idea that effluents could be fed into surrounding waters
without cleaning, many major catastrophes occurred.
• For example, the toxic effects of mercury were seen in the Minamata
incident in Japan.
• Tens or even hundreds of people died of mercury intoxication in 1956,
as untreated effluents from a chemical factory were discharged in a bay
where local inhabitants took their household water and ate the fish.
• Although the acute catastrophe could be pinpointed to the single year,
the mercury contamination of the bay occurred between 1932 and 1968,
and up to the present, around 2000 people have died with mercury
intoxication being at least partially responsible, and more than 10,000
people have received some kind of compensation for mercury-
intoxication-caused damages.
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• Uncleaned paper- and pulp-mill effluents used to be a

major environmental question in western Europe and
North America. In the 1960s, the paperand pulp-mill
industry of Sweden and Finland produced an amount of
effluent corresponding to the effluent produced by
100,000,000 people. At that time, all the water areas
close to the paper and pulp mills were dead. Also, as a
result of effluent discharge, the persistent organic
pollutant (POP) concentrations (including
polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs) were so high that the
reproduction of, for example, seals was very markedly
affected.
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• Since then, advances in paper- and pulp-mill

technology have enabled the industry to be
much more environmentally friendly: the use of
chlorine in bleaching has been virtually
discontinued, and the mills reuse most water.
Consequently, the areas earlier uninhabitable
for fish now have successful populations, and
the gray seal populations in the Baltic Sea, for
example, have increased markedly (Figure 1.2).
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• FIGURE 1.2 Approximate population changes of the gray seal in the

Baltic Sea from the 1940s to the 2000s.
• Up to the 1940s, the population had decreased markedly from about
100,000 before the twentieth century because of
• intensive hunting. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the population remained
stable, and then decreased in the 1960s and
• 1970s with the rise of a paper- and pulp-mill industry with poor effluent
purification. The pollution of the Baltic Sea
• was associated with marked reproductive problems in seals. With the
increasing efficiency of effluent cleaning, seal
• reproduction has again improved, and the population size is close to the
value seen in the 1940s and 1950s. Source:
• Harding and Härkönen (1999) and Harding et€al. (2007).
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• As a general conclusion from the history of aquatic toxicology, one

can say that solutions to environmental problems are possible, but
remediation and prevention of future problems require financial
commitment.
• Thus, we should be prepared to pay some extra cost for products that
contribute minimally to the deterioration of the aquatic environment.
• The decisions of consumers can ultimately change the ways of
production. The directors of Scandinavian paper- and pulp-mill
companies said in the 1960s that cleaning the effluents would not be
possible as it would unacceptably reduce profits.
• However, when paper consumers started demanding cleaner paper, and
began to leave environmentally costly products on the shelf, measures
for producing environmentally friendlier paper were soon established.
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