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Sediment Toxicity and Bioaccumulation Assessment in Abandoned Copper and Mercury Mining Areas of the Nalón River Basin (Spain)

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Abstract

Sediment toxicity and metal bioaccumulation were assessed at sites affected by historical copper (Cu) and mercury (Hg) mining activities in the Nalón River basin, Asturias, Spain. Toxicity assessment of stream sediments was based on a 28-day oligochaete Tubifex tubifex sediment bioassay, which allowed the classification of sites into three levels of toxicity: 11 sites were classified as nontoxic (including Cu mine sites), three sites as potentially toxic, and seven sites as toxic (all located in Hg mine districts). The greatest levels of arsenic (As), chromium, Hg, lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) in T. tubifex were measured at sites affected by Hg mining and the highest Cu levels in tissues at Cu mining sites. Chronic toxicity responses were best explained by As and Hg sediment concentrations and by As, Pb, and Zn tissue residues. Residue levels of As, Hg, Zn, and Pb were successfully used to predict sediment chronic toxicity and estimate effective tissue residues.

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Acknowledgments

This work was possible thanks to the support from the Education and Science Ministry research project (MEC CGL2008-04502/BOS) and from the Basque Government (IT-405-10). L. Méndez-Fernández was assisted in this work by a doctoral grant from the Basque Government. We gratefully acknowledge Dr. Ordóñez for help identifying metal mines location in Asturias and Dr. Miranda for providing information on surveillance nets. Our thanks also go to B. Arce from Analytical Services of Sosprocan Unit (University of Cantabria) for technical and human support provided. We thank Keith Somers of the Ontario Department of Environment (Canada) for providing the Excel macro for constructing the ellipses and also P. Markaide for the valuable contribution on the custom made R script for dose–response model analysis. We also gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers who helped to improve the manuscript with useful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology and Animal Cellular Biology, University of the Basque Country, Box 644, 48080, Bilbao, Spain

    L. Méndez-Fernández & P. Rodríguez

  2. Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology, University of the Basque Country, Box 644, 48080, Bilbao, Spain

    M. Martínez-Madrid

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  1. L. Méndez-Fernández
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  3. M. Martínez-Madrid
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Correspondence to L. Méndez-Fernández.

Appendix

Appendix

See Figs. 4, 5 and Tables 5, 6, and 7 in Appendix.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Map of study area in Nalón River basin (a) with detailed map of mining areas in Riosa and Pola de Lena (b) and Mieres (c). N1r, N2r, N18r and N22r are reference sites from Water Authorities surveillance nets

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Fig. 5
figure 5

PCA ordination after Varimax rotation of 25 sites in the Nalon River basin. Each site is marked by a symbol corresponding to four different anthropogenic pressure types

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Table 5 River water and sediment physical–chemical characteristics
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Table 6 Variable loadings on each principal components (PC) (bivariate correlations between the observed variables and the first two PCs
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Table 7 Spearman´s rank correlation values (ρ) between nMDS axes (MDS1 and MDS2) and metal levels in sediment and tissue residues, used as vectors
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Méndez-Fernández, L., Rodríguez, P. & Martínez-Madrid, M. Sediment Toxicity and Bioaccumulation Assessment in Abandoned Copper and Mercury Mining Areas of the Nalón River Basin (Spain). Arch Environ Contam Toxicol 68, 107–123 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00244-014-0093-8

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