Abstract
A mysterious oil spill occurred in the ocean near Brazil in 2019, which affected coastal areas in northeastern Brazil. When oil pollution occurs in coastal zones, organisms such as small mammals can suffer deleterious effects to their health. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of exposure to contaminated sandy soil with different crude oil concentrations in males of the species Calomys laucha. The exposure to crude oil resulted in multiple health issues for the subjects in the very first days of exposure. Furthermore, the exposure resulted in mutagenic damage to bone marrow blood cells and behavioral and morphological alterations, which were almost always in a dose-dependent form. The present study demonstrates the sensibility of the biomarkers used and highlights that small wild mammals such as C. laucha are useful for predicting environmental damage caused by the exposure to crude oil.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the CAPES for providing master scholarships (KAA) and doctoral scholarships (JOP, PFR, RAV, CLFF, OVRJ).
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This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES)-Finance Code 001 and the Institutional Program for Internationalization (CAPES-PrInt). Thanks are due to FCT/MCTES for the financial support to CESAM (UID/AMB/50017/2019 and UIDP/50017/2020 + UIDB/50017/2020), through national funds.
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KAA was responsible for conducting the experiments and the data analysis. EMG, ALMB, MLM, and DD were co-responsible for the design of the experimental design and choice of the analyzed variables. JOP, RAT, CLFF, PFR, and OVRJ were responsible for analyzing and interpreting the data and writing the manuscript. FMRSJ supervised the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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de Almeida, K.A., Garcia, E.M., Penteado, J.O. et al. Multimarker approach to assess the exposure of the wild rodent Calomys laucha to a simulated crude oil spill. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 2236–2244 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10673-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10673-8