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Science ResearchWork Bioaccumulation

Bioaccumulation is the process where chemicals like DDT accumulate in organisms through the food chain, with higher concentrations found in predators like cormorants. Biomagnification refers to the increasing concentration of DDT as it moves up the food chain. DDT, an insecticide first produced in the 1840s, was initially effective in controlling disease-carrying insects but later revealed harmful effects on the environment and wildlife, as highlighted in Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring.'

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3 views2 pages

Science ResearchWork Bioaccumulation

Bioaccumulation is the process where chemicals like DDT accumulate in organisms through the food chain, with higher concentrations found in predators like cormorants. Biomagnification refers to the increasing concentration of DDT as it moves up the food chain. DDT, an insecticide first produced in the 1840s, was initially effective in controlling disease-carrying insects but later revealed harmful effects on the environment and wildlife, as highlighted in Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring.'

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ruhaan1910
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© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Bioaccumulation

What is Bioaccumulation?
Bioaccumulation is the process of accumulation or building up of a
chemical like pesticides or insecticides. Let’s take the example of
DDT. Bioaccumulation occurs in the body of an organism like
shrimps which consumed the DDT in algae and the fish have
consumed the shrimp and then Cormorants (fish eating birds) eat the
fish. So, this tells us that now the fish and then the cormorant has also
consumed the DDT. Now because of this most DDT will be in
Cormorant, moderate DDT will be in fish and least DDT will be in
shrimp. Bioaccumulation occurs till the shrimp dies. The longer the
shrimp lives, and the more DDT it takes in, the more DDT it gets in
its body.

What is Biomagnification?
As you can see in the picture below and in the above paragraph the
amount of DDT is increasing organism by organism in the food
chain. The increasing of the amount of DDT is called
Biomagnification.
DDT
DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) is an insect killing
substance or an insecticide. DDT was first produced in the 1847s in
St. Louis, USA by the Michigan Chemical Corporation. It was used
to kill the insects which transmit diseases. It was specially used for
the fleas which transmit a disease called and mosquitos who transmit
malaria.

No one new that DDT can even harm organisms like humans and
animals which no one wanted to kill. In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote a
book called Silent Spring in which she told that DDT is not only
harming the birds. Her book made many people realise that many
insecticides or pesticides including DDT can harm the environment.
Facts on DDT-
1) By 1967, malaria had been eradicated from most developed
nations using DDT.
2) During the years that DDT was in use, bald eagle populations
increased.
3) When Sri Lanka banned DDT use in the mid-1960s, the number
of malaria cases rose from twenty-nine in 1964 to more than
half a million five years later.

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