Bioaccumulation of silver from laboratory‐spiked sediments in the oligochaete (Lumbriculus variegatus)

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Abstract
A 28‐d bioaccumulation study was conducted to assess the potential of silver to bioaccumulate in the oligochaeteLumbriculus variegatus.The oligochaetes were exposed to laboratory‐spiked sediments containing approx. 444 mg Ag/kg dry weight for up to 28 d. Fifteen test replicates were prepared by adding 300 adultL. variegatusto 4‐L glass beakers containing 1 L of silver sulfide‐amended sediment. An equal number of controls were also prepared. After 1, 5, 13, 21, and 28 d of exposure to the sediments, the oligochaetes within each of three test and three control replicate vessels were recovered and counted. The recovered organisms were transferred to dilution water and allowed to purge gut contents for 24 h. The organisms recovered from each replicate vessel at each sampling period were pooled, dried, weighed, and analyzed to determine tissue silver concentrations. By the end of the test, the mean number of oligochaetes recovered from the control and the test sediments increased by 1.8‐ and 1.9‐fold, respectively. The accumulation factor for silver, as silver sulfide, was estimated to be 0.18. This low accumulation factor indicates that contamination of sediments with silver sulfide does not pose a major route of entry of silver into the aquatic food web.

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