Bioaccumulation

Abstract Bioaccumulation is a process by which a chemical from the environment accumulates in an organism's body over time. It results from mass equilibrium where the uptake of a chemical into the body of an organism exceeds the elimination of the chemical from the body. Bioaccumulation occurs when there is a concentration increase of the chemical in the tissues of an organism. When the concentration of a chemical becomes higher in an organism than in the environment, the bioaccumulation process is specifically termed bioconcentration. Distribution of an accumulated chemical in an organism varies significantly among tissues/organs, species, and chemicals. One of the important environmental concerns of bioaccumulation is biomagnification, whereby the concentration of a chemical increases at each higher trophic level through a food chain. Biomagnification can result in a concentration increase between two trophic levels of two to three orders of magnitude. The term bioaccumulation is sometimes also used to refer to the total amount of a chemical accumulated in the body of an organism.