Heavy Metal Risk Assessment in Bhavanapadu Creek Using Three Potamidid Snails - Telescopium telescopium, Cerithidea obtusa and Cerithidea cingulata

Human activities can increase metal concentrations to higher than background levels. The mining and processing ores, domestic waste water effluents, storm water runoff and industrial wastes and discharges are certain main anthropogenic sources of heavy metal pollution. Heavy metalpollution in aquatic ecosystem has been recognized as a serious environmentalproblem. In many cases, heavy metals occur in natural water bodies at levels below their toxic thresholds, however, due to their non degradable nature, such low concentrations may still pose risk of damage via uptake and subsequent bioaccumulation by organisms, which cannot be effectively metabolized and these absorbed metals are extracted. 

Several scientific observations have shown that heavy metals are bio concentrated or bioaccumulated in one or several compartments across food webs. Besides, the contamination of resources with trace elements may have devastating effect on the natural ecosystem functioning, as well as cause a decrease of biodiversity and extinction of sensitive taxa. Metalbioaccumulation can be of importance from the public health point of view,especially when humans consume the accumulators. Secondly, this phenomenon is now being exploited in the assessment of environmental quality, in addition to chemical surveys of water and sediment.