Evaluation of PCB and hexachlorobenzene biota-sediment accumulation factors based on ingested sediment in a deposit-feeding clam

Contaminated sediment exposure experiments were conducted using a marine deposit-feeding clam (Macoma nasuta) to determine biota-sediment accumulation factors (BSAFs) based on ingested sediment and fecal organic carbon. Internal, or gut, BSAFs were determined for hexachlorobenzene and 13 polychlorinated biphenyl congeners and were compared to those found with the standard method of calculating BSAFs, which uses the organic carbon and contaminant concentration of the whole or external sediment. The results of these experiments indicated that gut BSAFs were consistently smaller and less variable across sediment types than the corresponding standard BSAFs. Although these results indicate that using ingested sediment concentrations and fecal total organic carbon to calculate gut BSAFs might improve the predictive ability of the standard BSAF model, the benefit is small when compared to the difficulty in measuring the contaminant concentration on ingested sediment and the organic carbon content of feces.