First Assessment of Arsenic in Magellanic Penguin from Argentina

ROMERO, M.B; CHIODI BOUDET, L. N.; POLIZZI, P.; FERNANDEZ, E.; DOLAGARATZ CARRICAVUR, A.; GERPE, M.S.

Montevideo

Congreso; SETAC Latin America 15th Biennial Meeting; 2023

Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)

Arsenic (As) is one of the most important global environmental pollutants. Although human activities contribute little to the As increase of the open ocean, they may be important in estuaries and coastal waters receiving As-contaminated drainage from the land. Penguins have been used as monitors of the state of the environments. The Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) is the most important seabird as a tourist resource on the Argentine coast and many populations are affected by fishing activities, chronic pollution and global climate change. The objective of the study was to determine the concentrations of total As in liver, kidney and muscle of Magellanic penguins. During the years 2020 and 2021, 20 in dividuals were found dead on the beaches of the cities of Miramar and Mar del Sud in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. The quantification of total As was carried out by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry with a hydride generation. The limit of detection was 0.005 µg/g. Data is expressed in µg/g wet weight. The detection percentage was 40% for liver and kidney and 70% for muscle. The As concentrations in the analyzed samples ranged from < 0.005 to 0.039 µg/g for liver, < 0.005 to 0.190 µg/g for kidney and < 0.005 to 0.20 µg/g for muscle . In order to perform statistical analysis, a value equal to half of the detection limit was arbitrarily assigned for those samples that showed values below this limit. Mean As values in muscle and kidney tended to be slightly higher than those found in liver, but this difference was not statistically significant. A relationship was found between body weight and As concentrations in muscle (R2 = 0.74, p