Moreover, heavy metals are not biodegradable in nature and accumulate in the food chain through biotransformation, bioaccumulation and
biomagnification (Aslam et al., 2011).
Fish, being at top of aquatic food webs, can become victim of bioaccumulation and
biomagnification of toxic metals.
Hilomen said these nanoplastics can reach humans through
biomagnification. This means organisms with nanoplastics can be eaten by bigger organisms, causing these bigger creatures to ingest whatever nanoplastics are in the system of the organism they just ate.
This information is extremely useful for conservation and ecological management, as indicators of productivity (Thebault & Loreau, 2003), ecosystem perturbation (Cucherousset, Bouletreau, Martino, Roussel, & Santoul, 2012; McMeans, Rooney, Arts, & Fisk, 2013; Busst & Britton, 2017), and contaminant
biomagnification (Pouilly et al., 2013; Marshall, Forsberg, & Peleja, 2016).
Mercury bioaccumulation and
biomagnification in a small Arctic polynya ecosystem.
The authors claimed that Se which occurred naturally in marine food chains (the lower trophic level) could play a key role as a main modifier of MeHg accumulation at these levels, thereby also potentially affects
biomagnification of MeHg toward the higher trophic levels in the aquatic food chains.
Therefore, eutrophication can change the environment and the community richness, affecting the pollutants bioaccumulation and
biomagnification [6, 11].
Predatory species that live at a higher trophic level are more comparable to humans and thereby more exposed to
biomagnification, such as mercury [1, 34, 35].
Murch, "
Biomagnification of cyanobacterial neurotoxins and neurodegenerative disease among the Chamorro people of Guam," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol.
This diversity will lead to higher
biomagnification [42].