Pandey A S, MacRae T H
Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 1991 Feb;21(1):68-79. doi: 10.1016/0147-6513(91)90009-e.
Mercury can be coupled to a wide variety of organic compounds but there is limited information concerning the influence of such substitutions on the toxicity of mercury within the marine environment. We therefore determined the effects of six organomercuries on the emergence and hatching of the brine shrimp, Artemia. The relative toxicities of the organic mercuries were unaffected by the ability of the compounds to ionize, whereas the sizes of the compounds appeared to be important. Thus, brine shrimp were equally sensitive to five of the organic mercuries while diphenylmercury, the largest of the organic mercuries tested, was the least toxic. In the presence of 0.1 microM diphenylmercury the final amount of hatching was similar to that in the absence of metal but in this situation there was an easily measured reduction in the rate of development. By determining the rates of emergence and hatching it is apparent that Artemia are adversely affected by organic mercuries at concentrations less than 0.1 microM, the lowest level examined in this study. The work extends our earlier findings with cadmium and zinc, supporting the proposal that Artemia is an excellent alternative to more complex, slow-growing animals for the study of biochemical/physiological aspects of marine pollution.
汞能与多种有机化合物结合，但关于此类取代对海洋环境中汞毒性的影响，相关信息有限。因此，我们测定了六种有机汞对卤虫（Artemia）孵化和出膜的影响。有机汞的相对毒性不受化合物电离能力的影响，而化合物的大小似乎很重要。因此，卤虫对其中五种有机汞同样敏感，而所测试的最大的有机汞——二苯基汞，毒性最小。在存在0.1微摩尔二苯基汞的情况下，最终孵化量与无金属时相似，但在这种情况下，发育速率有明显降低且易于测量。通过测定出膜和孵化速率可知，卤虫在浓度低于0.1微摩尔时就会受到有机汞的不利影响，这是本研究中检测的最低水平。这项工作扩展了我们早期关于镉和锌的研究结果，支持了这样一种观点，即卤虫是研究海洋污染生化/生理方面的一种优秀替代生物，相较于更复杂、生长缓慢的动物而言。
