Bioavailability, Bioconcentration, and Biomagnification of Pollutants

This chapter introduces the negative effects of environmental pollution on the ecosystem and also explores the phenomena of bioavailability, bioconcentration or bioaccumulation, and biomagnification in detail. Initially, the chapter delineates these phenomena along with a basic understanding of scientific concepts of food chain, food web, and trophic levels. The later part of the chapter discusses the ubiquitous pollutants in natural ecosystems. This includes contaminants like metal wastes (heavy metals and radioactive wastes), organic pollutants (agricultural wastes and other pollutants), microplastic wastes, and nanomaterial wastes. This chapter emphasizes the bioavailability, bioconcentration or bioaccumulation, and biomagnification of these pollutants in ecosystems by describing the results obtained from different studies.