Determination of benzo(a)pyrene metabolites in the bile of winter flounder from the New York Bight

A method for detecting the concentration of BaP Metabolites in fish tissues has been developed. The analytical procedure includes extraction of PAH and BaP Metabolites from fish bile, liver extract and muscle extract; reduction of metabolites to BaP using hydriodic acid; and subsequent analysis of the BaP by thin layer chromatography with fluorescence detection. The method is applied to tissues from fish collected from polluted as well as clean reference waters and experimental tanks with dilutions of treated industrial wastewater. Experimental results on one kind of bottom-dwelling fish, winter flounder, which comes from the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, NY, where the water and sediment contain toxic chemicals as BaP and PAH, show fish do uptake BaP from the environment. The bigger the fish, the more BaP they uptake. The concentration of BaP metabolites in fish liver is higher than in bile and muscle. Generally, during the summer, fish uptake more BaP than in the winter