Accumulation and half-lives of 13 pesticides in muscle tissue of freshwater fishes through food exposure

Fish are often exposed to various molecules like pesticides. Some of these compounds get biomagnified within aquatic food web, inducing health hazards of consumers. However, behaviors of many pesticides are still unknown. This work aims to study the uptake and the elimination of some of them in muscle tissue of edible fish (azoxystrobin, clomazone, diflufenican, dimethachlor, carbendazim, iprodion, isoproturon, mesosulfuron-methyl, metazachlor, napropamid, quizalofop, and thifensulfuron-methyl).Two freshwater fish species (Perca fluviatilis and Cyprinus carpio) were exposed to a mixture of these 13 pesticides, via multi-contaminated pellets, and then, eliminated. Compounds were measured in food, water and muscle tissue using multi-residues methods.Kinetics, biomagnification factors (BMFs) and half-lives (t1/2) were estimated and they did not show a large difference between the species. Muscular BMFs ranged from 2 × 10−6 (mesosulfuron-methyl in perch) to 1 × 10−3 (isoproturon and napropamid in perch) and t1/2 ranged from 0.8 (mesosulfuron-methyl in perch) to 40.3 d (napropamid in carp). BMFs were also modeled as a function of Kow value. All BMF values were explained by the model, except for diflufenican which had a BMF lower than that expected by our modeling work, probably due to an efficient metabolism. Results led to the conclusion that none of these chemicals would probably be biomagnified within aquatic food webs.

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► C. carpio and P. fluviatilis were food-exposed to a mixture of 13 pesticides.
► Biomagnification factors (BMFs) in muscle tissue were low but half-lives could be high. Pesticides BMF values were compared to data of other compounds from the literature.
► BMFs were described by a model based on log Kow (octanol–water partition coefficient).