Technical Bulletin No. 0927: The Potential for Bioaccumulation, Bioconcentration, and Biomagnification of Selected Metals in an Aquatic Food Chain: A Literature Review

This document presents a review of the literature examining bioaccumulation, bioconcentration, and biomagnification of heavy metals in freshwater food chains. Bioaccumulation is a general term for the accumulation or increase of substances in an organism or part of an organism compared to the concentration of the substance in the environment. Bioconcentration refers to the process resulting in an organism having a higher concentration of a substance than is in its surrounding environmental media, such as stream water.