Dietary uptake in pike (Esox lucius) of some polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated naphthalenes and polybrominated diphenyl ethers administered in natural diet

The dietary uptake of 12 halogenated diaromatic compounds was studied using northern pike (Esox lucius L.) fed with rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum)). Before the trout were fed to the pike, they had been injected with a cocktail of five polychlorinated biphenyls, four polychlorinated naphthalenes, and three polybrominated diphenyl ethers, dissolved in rainbow trout lipid. The reported uptake efficiencies (E) were in the range 35 to 90% and differ in some respect from earlier studies. The E-values for those substances with effective cross sections (ECS) >9.5 Angstrom were considerably higher than expected if the membrane permeation at dietary uptake was restricted as proposed previously in the literature. There was no hydrophobicity dependency of the total dietary uptake efficiency as suggested by an earlier proposed empirical model. The difference between the results presented here and earlier studies is likely to depend on cotransport with lipids and/or proteins through a mediated, possibly active uptake of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOC) in the gastrointestinal tract enabled by the actual exposure method. For the proposed mediated/active uptake of HOCs, the uptake efficiency varied with molecular weight and was greatest for a molecular weight of approximately 450.