Heavy metals accumulation in edible forest resources in the inner-city territories

St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Biology, Department of Applied Ecology, Universitetskaya Emb. 7-9, St Petersburg, 199034, Russia

^* Corresponding author: elizaveta902@mail.ru

Abstract

Monitoring and assessment of the potential contaminants transfer into food chains is an important component of the control of the ecotoxicological state of living systems, which reflects the ecotoxicological situation of particular areas. Consumption of wild mushrooms and berries by citizens in the inner-city and adjacent to the city territories is fraught with negative consequences for health, due to the heightened susceptibility of components of these ecosystems to anthropogenic impact, which is expressed, among other factors, in the pollutants accumulation in natural environments and the production of living communities. In the ecological realities of the XXI century, monitoring of this parameter is an important unit of the assessment and further control of toxicological safety of natural ecosystems and human. The study was devoted to the assessment of accumulation of highly toxic pollutants - heavy metals in non-timber cohort of primary production of forest communities, consumed as food by fauna of the studied area and the citizens of the adjacent areas, as well as comparison of concentrations of a number of pollutants with normatively established for safe for health food consumption levels.