Part of Lesson Plan: Accumulation of Toxins in Food Web -- Beth Knapp

Activity Overview / Details

There are two basic terms we are discussing here. Bioaccumulation refers to how pollutants enter a food chain; biomagnification refers to the tendency of pollutants to concentrate as they move from one trophic level to the next. Here are some definitions of these terms: Bioaccumulation:increase in concentration of a pollutant from the environment to the first organism in a food chain. Biomagnification:increase in concentration of a pollutant from one link in a food chain to another