Toxic Contaminants in the Urban Aquatic Environment

Management of urban areas to reduce their impact on salmonids requires an understanding of the water quality affecting them, including anthropogenically derived toxic chemicals entering urban waterways used by salmonids. Toxic contaminants create complex problems for aquatic organisms and have important implications for natural resource managers. Toxicity is associated with exposure; therefore, it is important to understand the occurrence and concentration of toxic chemicals, which can range from episodic at high concentrations to chronic exposures at low concentrations. In addition, there are several categories of toxic chemicals with many individual chemicals within each class, which could have similar or very different environmental concentrations, longevity, and toxicity.