Are fecal stanols suitable to record and identify a pulse of human fecal contamination in short-term exposed shellfish? A microcosm study
Résumé
In this study, the capacity of oysters to bioaccumulate fecal stanols and to record a source-specific
fingerprint was investigated by the short-term contamination of seawater microcosms containing oysters
with a human effluent. Contaminated oysters bioaccumulated the typical fecal stanols coprostanol and
24-ethylcoprostanol and their bioaccumulation kinetics were similar to that of the Fecal Indicator Bacteria
Escherichia coli used in European legislation. Although stanol fingerprints of contaminated water
allowed the identification of the human specific fingerprint, this was not the case for oysters. This discrepancy
is attributed to (i) high concentrations of endogenous cholestanol and sitostanol, responsible
for ‘‘unbalanced’’ stanol fingerprints, (ii) different accumulation/depuration kinetics of fecal coprostanol
and 24-ethylcoprostanol and (iii) the limits of the analytical pathway used. These results show that fecal
stanols bioaccumulated by oysters are useful to record fecal contamination but the usefulness of stanol
fingerprints to identify specific sources of contamination in shellfish currently seems limited.
Domaines
Sciences de la TerreOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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