Are soft tissues of urban rats good indicators of exposure to heavy metal pollution? A study conducted in one of the most polluted basins of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The overall goal of this work was to analyze the relationship between the concentration of lead in the kidney, liver, and stomach contents of rats captured in a polluted urban basin and the concentration of this metal in the environment, meteorological factors, and different intrinsic characteristics of the individuals. To this end, we determined the concentration of lead in the kidney, liver, and stomach contents of 133 Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) captured in the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin (Buenos Aires, Argentina). This basin is one of the most severe cases of water pollution in Latin America and metals like lead represent the most common chemical pollutants. Rats were trapped in nine sites with different soil and water lead concentrations, between 2014 and 2015. A positive relationship was found between lead concentration in the liver and kidney of R. norvegicus and the environmental concentration of this metal in water and soil. Although the remaining variables analyzed were also related to the lead concentration in soft tissues, they did not affect the association between the lead concentration in soft tissues and that in the environment. The lead concentration in the stomach contents was not related to any of the variables analyzed. Our results constitute the first study in an urban basin with a gradient of environmental lead concentration and suggest that the quantification of lead in the kidney and liver of rats can be used as an indicator of exposure to this metal within a large city.

Intra- and inter-annual variations in metal concentrations in the superficial water of a highly polluted urban basin of Argentina.

To protect ecosystems impacted by human activities and prevent their degradation, it is imperative to evaluate variations in the concentration of environmental pollutants over time. Here, we evaluated the intra- and inter-annual variations of several metals from 15 sites in the Matanza Riachuelo River basin (one of the most polluted in the world) and determined the physicochemical and meteorological parameters associated with these changes from 2008 to 2015. For this, in each site, we used Asymmetric Eigenvector Maps and Redundancy Analysis. The results highlighted temporal patterns of metal concentrations and several factors associated with them, perhaps related to the actions performed in the area since 2008. Additionally, we found that the effects of physicochemical and meteorological factors on metal concentrations were site-dependent, possibly related to the presence of different local sources of pollution or characteristics of the river in each site, such as its sediments. This approach could be applied to different scenarios (aquatic and terrestrial) and could provide a tool to help decision-makers address the harmful consequences of the continuous advance of human activities on human and ecosystem health.