Mussels to determine how much contamination is in...( This release is available in Spanish...)

Studying living things can prove to be highly significant when evaluating contamination suffered by a specific environment. A research team from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), with Dr. Nestor Etxebarria as director, is involved in this monitoring of contaminants. As Dr. Etxebarria explains, "it is known that ports are contaminated; what we are investigating is to what extent the contaminants therein reach aquatic organisms". The project, Comprehensive evaluation of contamination in sediments at ports along the northern Spanish coast, using chemical, biochemical and ecotoxicological tools, is within the remit of the lines of research by the Analytical Research and Innovation (IBEA) research team led by Professor Juan Manuel Madariaga, and aided by doctors Alberto de Diego, Gorka Arana, Aresatz Usobiaga and Olatz Zuloaga.

Chemists at UPV/EHU, working together with a team of marine biologists from the University of Vigo and a similar team from AZTI-Tecnalia, have been analysing the harbours at this Galician city, as well as those in Bilbao and the port of Pasajes: their waters, the sediments and living creatures therein. They measure the concentration of contaminants and analyse the biological consequences that these cause in the aquatic organisms, using biomonitoring. "We take mussels from clean waters and place them at points we wish to analyse in order to see how much and what kind of contamination is accumulated", stated Dr Etxebarria. "The Galician biologists are in charge of studying the consequences of the contaminants on the mussels; we measure the concentration of the contaminants received by the mussels", he added.

The object of the research is to answer questions such as: where is each kind of contamination located? What is the chemical origin of each? Of all the contaminants, the U
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