Bioindicators as a tool for environmental pollution analysis

Abstract

The interest in using bioindicators as monitoring tools to assess environmental pollution with toxic metals continually increasing. Heavy metals arise from natural sources and human activities, and once released in the environment they do not disappear, but accumulate in soils, sediments and biota and become a global problem. Due to the easy transport and circulation of pollutants in the nature and the high correlation of the food web systems, the consequences of the increasing pollution are relatively rapidly reflected on people. A bioindicator can be defined as an organism or a part of an organism or a community of organisms that contains information on the quantitative aspects of the quality of the environment. Bioindicators can be animals or plants, and mostly used animal species as bioindicators are zooplankton, invertebrates and vertebrates while biomaterials such as micro and macro algae, fungi, lichens, mosses, tree bark and leaves of higher plants have been mostly used as plant bioindicators. Depending on their environment, one or the other kind of bioindicators are used to detect the deposition, accumulation and distribution of heavy metal pollution in soil, water and air. This work summarized the recent studies of various organisms used as a toxic metal bioindicators in air, water and soil ecosystems, and clearly confirms the importance, necessity and efficiency of bioindicators as a relatively new tool for monitoring and analysis of environmental pollution.

Interesovanje za korišćenje bioindikatora kao sredstva za monitoring i procenu zagađenosti životne sredine toksičnim metalima neprestano se povećava. Teški metali dospevaju u okruženje iz prirodnih izvora, ali i putem antropogenih aktivnosti, a jednom dospeli u životnu sredinu oni ne nestaju već se akumuliraju u zemljištu, sedimentu i bioti i sve više postaju rastući globalni problem. Usled lakog transporta i kruženja zagađujućih materija u prirodi, kao i velike povezanosti u lancu ishrane, posledice sve većeg zagađenja se relativno brzo manifestuju i na ljude. Bioindikator se može definisati kao organizam ili deo organizma ili kao zajednica organizama koja sadrži sa kvantitativnog aspekta informacije o kvalitetu životne sredine. Bioindikator mogu biti životinje ili biljke, i od životinjskih vrsta se koriste zooplankton, beskičmenjaci i kičmenjaci, dok se biomaterijali poput mikro i makro algi, gljiva, lišajeva, mahovina, kore drveta i lišća viših biljaka uglavnom koriste kao biljni bioindikatori. U zavisnosti od njihovog staništa, jedna ili druga grupa bioindikatora koristi se za detekciju taloženja, akumulacije i distribucije teških metala u tlu, vodi i vazduhu. Ovaj rad daje pregled novijih istraživanja o različitim organizmima koji se koriste kao bioindikatori toksičnih metala u vazduhu, vodi i zemljištu, i jasno potvrđuje važnost, neophodnost i efikasnost bioindikatora kao relativno novog načina za praćenje i analizu zagađenja životne sredine.