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the case study and answer the following questions on your scrAPES website as STATEMENTS, not simply answering the questions number by number. Part I: 1: What is in some fish and shellfish that has caused the EPA and FDA to issue the restriction for pregnant women and for young children? Mercury. 2: Why is there a restriction for pregnant women and young children, but not the rest of the population? It can cause birth damage. 3: Do pregnant women have to avoid all fish? Explain your answer. No, only the biggest shes that have more mercury in their system. 4: Should Amanda have avoided the pan-seared tuna for lunch? Because its mercury level is high. 5: Why is eating fish good for you? Do you want to avoid fish all together? Why or why not? Because its protein, but we should avoid the big shes that contain the
most mercury.
Part II: 1: What human actions lead to increased Mercury levels in the environment? Coal burning, fossil fuels. 2: How does the Mercury end in fish? DRAW a flow chart following the Mercury path. Because they eat phytoplankton, and it goes on and on. 3: Where in the United States are Mercury wet deposition levels highest? What do you think explains this pattern? Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida because they have the most coal-burning power plants. 4: The EPA criterion for human health is 0.3 ug/g. Which fish species have average concentrations that exceed the EPA limits? Largemouth and Spotted Bass. 5: The concern level for piscivorous (fish-eating) mammals is 0.1 Hg ug/g. Which fish species have average mercury concentrations that exceed this limit? Why is the mercury level for piscivorous mammals lower than the level for human health? Trout and bass. Mercury is higher in shes because all the mercury is mostly in the ocean.
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6: Should you be concerned about mercury toxicity if you catch and eat a largemouth bass in a local lake? Why or why not? Yes, because of his highest level of mercury. 7: In which samples were mercury concentrations the highest (fish, streams, or sediment)? Why do you think this is? Sediments, because it can be in both ground and water. Part III:
Text 1: Draw a food web for Lake Washington using the species and food preferences given in Table 3. Start with phytoplankton (algae) as the base of your web and then build up the food chain.
2: Label the species in your food chain as either high (>100 ug/kg), medium (20-100 ug/ kg), or low (below 20 ug/kg) mercury concentrations. Which types of animals have the highest levels of mercury? Which types of animals have the lowest? Why do you think this is? Final Activity 1: Imagine you are Tara. Write a letter to your friend Amanda explaining what you have learned about mercury. Be sure to convey the aspects of your learning that will be most useful to Amanda. 2: Find two other samples of compounds that biomagnify. Explain how each compound and/or toxin enters the biosphere and what impacts it has on living organisms in general and humans in particular.
Dear Amanda. I found out that different types of sh contain different amounts of mercury. Its bad to eat large and biggest shes because of their higher amount of mercury. The mercury usually comes from coal-burning power plants, and fossil fuels, to go into the ocean to the phytoplankton. Bass Largemouth contain a high level of mercury. The sh with the lowest amount of mercury is catsh, its better not to eat sh more than 6 pound because it can cause birth defects.
DDT and pesticides: its use to kill to the pesticides, but it pollutes the air. It lead to headaches, nauseas. What happened in Borneos, that it was designed to kill the insects but it affected the food chain. From small to big, it affected the insects but then the bigger animals.