| Marine Environmental Contamination Data collected by various agencies and universities indicates that California’s urban ocean environments (e.g., San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles/Orange County regions, San Diego) contain toxic contaminant concentrations at sufficiently elevated levels to cause adverse effects on biota and humans (e. g., see http://www.SFEI.org/sfeireports.htm). Contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, legacy pesticides (DDT, dieldrin, chlordane), selenium, and flame retardants (polybrominated diethyl ethers, or PBDEs), are known to accumulate to high tissue concentrations in animals at the top of the food web. Therefore, they pose significant risk to fishes and other wildlife, not to mention humans. Increased contaminant concentrations in the environment have well recognized impacts on the normal endocrine physiology of animals. Mercury in animals and humans has been implicated in thyroid and reproductive endocrine disruption and with associated developmental disorders. Research has also strongly implicated PCBs in disrupting the neuroendocrine “stress response system”, as well as the endocrine systems regulating body growth and tissue maintenance, thyroid hormones, development, and immune function. Legacy pesticides, including the well-known DDTs as well as others such as dieldrin and chlordane, exert effects causing reproductive endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, and carcinogenesis. PBDEs, increasing rapidly in wildlife and humans over the last decade, are now known to disrupt thyroid hormone systems in mammals and fish, which can affect neural development and have metabolic effects. Additional contaminants of concern include dioxins, pyrethoid pesticides (popular in California agriculture), perfluorinated chemical (PFCs) such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), all of which are known to accumulate in the environment and in wildlife. In the efforts to date to assess environmental contamination in marine environments, one of the least studied and understood aspects relates to contaminant effects on the functions and well-being of the wildlife that lives within. EEL continues to develop new state-of-the-art methodologies to assess impacts in exposed wildlife and ecosystems. The animal endocrine system is exceedingly sensitive to perturbation by environmental factors, natural and anthropomorphic. It is responsible for maintaining physiological homeostasis, necessary for life functions (it also has important effects on behavior) under any conditions presented to an animal. Therefore, the endocrine system is both highly sensitive and essential to survival. Analysis of “environmental endocrine disruption” in wildlife has taken an emerging important role in defining the quality of environmental conditions for environmental monitoring programs. In addition, identifying and characterizing broader impacts is strongly enhanced by determining the wider phenotypic effects of impacted environments. Analysis of phenotype alterations using protein expression profiling (PEP), or “proteome screening”, is poised to take assessment of environmental effects to a new level of detail and accuracy. |
Environmental Information
| www.ISC-Bio.org/EEL |
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