Environmental Effects of Pesticides – Biomagnification

The story of DDT, used so widely during the 1940, 1950, and early 1960, illustrates the hazards
of chemical pesticides. In the 1950 and 1960, ornithologists (people who study birds) observed
drastic declines in populations of many species of birds that fed at the tops of food chains. Fish-
eating birds such as the bald eagle and osprey were so affected that their extinction seemed
imminent. Investigators at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Research Center near Baltimore,
Maryland, showed that the problem was reproductive failure: Eggs were breaking in the nest
before hatching. The investigators also showed that the fragile eggs contained high
concentrations of dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), a product of the partial breakdown of
DDT by the animal's body. DDE interferes with calcium metabolism, causing birds to lay thin-
shelled eggs. Further study revealed that birds were acquiring high levels of DDT and DDE by
bioaccumulation and biomagnification, the process of accumulating higher and higher doses
through the food chain. Because of accumulation, small, seemingly harmless amounts received
over a long period of time may reach toxic levels. This phenomenon, referred to as
bioaccumulation, can be understood as follows.

Many synthetic organics are highly soluble in lipids (fats or fatty compounds), but sparingly
soluble in water. As they pass through cell membranes, which are lipid, they come out of water
solution and enter into the lipids of the body. Thus, traces of synthetic organics like pesticides
and their breakdown products that are absorbed with food or water are trapped and held by the
body's lipids, while the water and water-soluble wastes are passed in the urine. Because
synthetics are unnatural compounds, the body cannot fully metabolize them and has no
mechanism to excrete them. Thus, trace levels consumed over time gradually accumulate in the
body and may produce toxic effects sooner or later.

Up the Chain: Bioaccumulation, which occurs, in the individual organism, may be compounded
through a food chain. Each organism accumulates the contamination in its food, so it
accumulates a concentration of contaminant in its body that is many times higher than that in its
food. In effect, the next organism in the food chain now has a more contaminated food and
accumulates the contaminant to yet a higher level. Essentially all the contaminant accumulated
by the large biomass at the bottom of the food pyramid is concentrated, through food chains,
into the smaller and smaller biomass of organisms at the top of the food pyramid. This
multiplying effect of bioaccumulation that occurs through a food chain is called biomagnification.
One of the most distressing aspects of bioaccumulation and biomagnification is that there are
no warning symptoms until concentrations of contaminant in the body are high enough to cause
problems. Then it is too late to do much about it. As is often the case, bioaccumulation and
biomagnification go unrecognized until serious problems bring the phenomena to light.
 Bioconcentration
up the Trophic Pyramid

Energy degrades… but matter does not

Toxin
(e.g. heavy metals)