Dinâmica do mercúrio na estrutura do ecossistema do reservatório da Usina Hidrelétrica de Itaipu

Abstract

In recent decades the intensive development of economic activities and population growth resulted in greater pressure on aquatic ecosystems. And among the various forms of environmental contamination, pollution by metals such as mercury (Hg) stands out as one of the cause of concern for government researchers and agencies, as it can result in health problems, as a teratogenic agent and affect the central nervous system, furthermore, should be considered the environmental and economic effects. Based on this problem this research objectified to study the dynamics of Hg in the structure of the aquatic ecosystem of the Itaipu reservoir representative compartments of the trophic chain of this reservoir in order to preliminarily analyze the occurrence of biomagnification process in the trophic chain. The hypothesis was that the Hg presents different concentrations in different compartments and the concentration gradient obeys the same direction of flow of the food chain in aquatic ecosystem structure. Samples were collected in the months of December/2014, May and August/2015 in an arm of the Itaipu reservoir, located in São Miguel do Iguaçu, Brazil, covering three points. The compartments analyzed for total Hg were the sediment, phytoplankton, zooplankton, zoobenthos and fish community, including three species of different eating habits, they being the Hypophtalmus edentatus (slicer), Pterodoras granulosus (omnivorous) and Cichla monoculus (piscívoro). Total Hg analyzes were performed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry a variance analysis (ANOVA) nonparametric was conducted to determine if there were differences in mercury concentration of the different components of the ecosystem. The results showed significant differences among the groups with the largest total Hg concentrations detected for phytoplankton (145,08 ng.g-1 ± 83.77), followed by zooplankton (87,62 ng.g-1 ± 25,58), zoobenthos (32.59 ng.g-1 ± 40,56), sediment (8.69 ng.g-1 ± 3,12) and fish (1,59 ± 1.48 ng.g-1 ). In the fish compartment, the highest concentrations were observed for the filtrador habit (H. edentatus) with 3,2 ng.g-1, followed by piscivorous species (C. monoculus) with 0,95 ng.g-1 and omnivorous (P. granulosus) 0,35 ng.g-1. It was detected significant relationship between the standard length and total Hg concentrations for the species analyzed. Preliminary analysis when the Biomagnification process showed that higher concentrations of total Hg in the food chain base compartments (phytoplankton), and the lowest concentrations of total Hg chain top bodies (fishes) indicate that probably biogeochemical conditions of this environment are not conducive to methylation and biomagnification of Hg.