Trophodynamics of polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the marine food web of Bohai Bay, North China

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are of great environmental concern due to the exponential increase of the concentrations in the environment, especially in high trophic level organisms, and the trophodynamics of these chemicals in aquatic food webs is an important criterion for assessing their ecological risk. This study analyzed 13 PBDEs in the zooplankton, five invertebrate species, six fish species, and one marine bird species collected from Bohai Bay. PBDE concentrations in organisms from Bohai Bay (Sigma PBDEs: 0.15-32.8 ng/g lipid weight) were low compared with other marine organisms worldwide, and BDE-47 was the predominant compound in most samples, followed by BDE-28, BDE-99/BDE-100, and BDE-119. Correlation between lipid-normalized concentrations of PBDEs, and trophic levels determined by stable nitrogen isotope technologies confirmed that PBDEs were biomagnified in the marine food web, Significantly positive relationships were found for total PBDEs and four PBDE compounds (BDE-28, BDE-47, BDE-100, and BDE-1 19), and their trophic magnification factors (TMFs) were 3.53, 3.57, 7.24, 3.23, and 2.60, respectively. The concentration ratios between congeners (BDE-99/BDE-100 and BDE-99/BDE-47) were found to decrease with increasing trophic levels, suggesting that trophic-level-dependent concentrations ratios between BDE-99 and BDE-100 would be contributed by trophic level-dependent biotransformation between BDE-99 and BDE-47, and therefore resulting in the dominance of BDE-100 compared with BDE-99 and the relatively high trophic magnification of BDE-47 in the marine food web.