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Occurrence and exposure risk assessment of organochlorine pesticides in two waterbird species from Honghu Lake Wetland, Central China

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Abstract

Monitoring and evaluating bird exposure to hazardous pollutants in wetlands are receiving considerable attention. In this study, the occurrence of 18 organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in the muscle of bean geese (Anser fabalis) and common teals (Anas crecca) collected from Honghu Lake Wetland (HLW), Central China was studied. Additionally, an exposure risk assessment model was applied to obtain risk levels of OCPs to these birds through three oral routes (food intake, water drinking and soil ingestion). The results suggested that the most abundant OCPs detected in the muscle of waterbirds were DDTs (7.68–602 ng/g lipid weight), followed by HCHs (1.39–89.8 ng/g lipid weight). A significant difference (p < 0.05) existed between two species, but most of OCPs exhibited no statistically relationship with age or gender (p > 0.05). The compositional patterns of OCPs combined with ratios of certain metabolites to their parent compounds indicated that all OCPs in the HLW were largely from historical usage except heptachlor. The exposure risk assessment revealed that common teals with lighter weight had greater exposure risks than bean geese. Of the OCPs analyzed, DDTs could probably cause harm to target birds studied here. Exposure via food intake was identified to be significant while soil ingestion and water drinking contributed least, but they should still be concerned.

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Data availability

The data used in this study is available with the corresponding author upon a reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The study was funded by China Postdoctoral Foundation (Y71I321K02), Talent Introduction Project of Yangtze University (No. 8021002902), and Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (No. B2020034). We gratefully acknowledge the Hubei Wildlife Protection Centre.

Funding

The study was funded by China Postdoctoral Foundation (Y71I321K02), Talent Introduction Project of Yangtze University (No. 8021002902), and Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (No. B2020034).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environment, Yangtze University, Wuhan, 430100, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Hu & Jingjing Lian

  2. Hubei Key Laboratory of Petroleum Geochemistry and Environment, Wuhan, 430100, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Hu

  3. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hubei Polytechnic University, Huangshi, 435003, People’s Republic of China

    Hongxia Liu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, People’s Republic of China

    Xinli Xing

  5. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710027, People’s Republic of China

    Feixiang Liu

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Contributions

YH: contributed to methodology, sampling, formal analysis and writing—original draft. HL: contributed to sampling, instrument analysis and data curation. XX: contributed to writing—review & editing and resources. JL: contributed to writing—review & editing. FL: contributed to data curation.

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Hu, Y., Liu, H., Xing, X. et al. Occurrence and exposure risk assessment of organochlorine pesticides in two waterbird species from Honghu Lake Wetland, Central China. Environ Geochem Health 45, 1919–1931 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-022-01316-7

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