Screening for Organic Pollutants in the Black Sea Turbot (Scophthalmus maeoticus)

The health of aquatic organisms can be affected due to anthropogenic activities and limited actions to reduce the pollution of the Black Sea. The accumulation of organic pollutants (OPs) in the aquatic environment occurs in water, sediment, and then biota. The turbot (Scophthalmus maeoticus) is a benthic fish of commercial interest scarcely studied in the Black Sea region, and none of the studies researched OP concentrations in its main tissues. In this paper, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and POPs, organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were determined in water, sediment, and turbot muscles, gills, gonads, and livers, to research their accumulation level. The determinations were made with gas chromatography on turbots sampled in 2021 from the Romanian Black Sea waters. OCPs-p,p'DDT and its metabolites p,p'DDE, p,p'DDD-are dominant in the turbot tissues. From PAHs, benzo(g,h, i)perylene was the dominant compound, while for PCBs it was PCB 52. The OPs' presence in the wild turbot is due to river input, dredging and coastal rehabilitation works, industrial activities and contaminated food and poses a risk to human health due to the exceeding maximum allowable concentration for human consumption in Romania and the European Union.

Automated summary

Anthropogenic activities and limited actions to reduce Black Sea pollution can negatively impact the health of aquatic organisms. This study investigated the accumulation levels of organic pollutants in the tissues of the turbot, a commercially valuable benthic fish species in the Black Sea. The results revealed the dominance of organochlorine pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which pose a risk to human health due to exceeding the maximum allowable concentration for consumption.