Antimony and heavy metals accumulation in some macroinvertebrates in the Yesilirmak River (N Turkey) near the Sb-mining area

Abstract

All aquatic invertebrates accumulate trace metals in their bodies whether or not these metals are essential to metabolism. Antimony is a trace element with quite low content in the earth’s crust about 0.2 ppm. Antimony is considered geochemically immobile (Ainsworth et al. 1991). Nevertheless, mobility and the biological role of Sb, its behavior and transfer into food chain, are not well known (Baroni et al. 2000). Total Sb concentrations in natural waters have been reported to be in the range of 0.01–1.1 mg/L (US EPA 1996). Acutely toxic concentrations of Sb are in the range of 22–36 mg/L fish (Lin and Hwang 1998), and 9–20 mg/L for daphnids (Anderson 2000), although the toxicity database is small. All these concentrations are above the typical range of concentrations in mine effluents. Therefore, Sb is unlikely to contribute appreciably to effluent acute toxicity. The aquatic toxicity database for Sb and the knowledge of species effluents from Sb mine are limited.