O. Torres, E. González
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,
Colombia
Keywords: lead contamination, fish, nanoestructured surfaces, modeling
Summary:
Lead contamination is recognized as a high impact problem due to its effects on the environment and living beings. In many countries of the world, concentrations in air, soil, water and food of this metal that exceed the limit values established by national and international regulations are being reported [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. Specifically, in fish, lead contamination is posing a serious problem of food safety, which must be addressed urgently. Taking advantage of the capabilities derived from emerging technologies, it becomes possible to formulate viable mitigation and remediation strategies. However, in order to carry out these actions, it is necessary to have a detailed knowledge of the causes, dynamics, space-time evolution and distribution of lead in the environment and living beings. The fixation and accumulation of lead occur through adsorption processes in the cell membrane, this being a biological surface, where there are processes of surface interaction [10]. The study of the fixation processes and the accumulation of lead in fish allows to understand the interaction processes between the biological interfaces and the chemical agents immersed in the process of accumulation of the metal in the biological surface [11]. Without this information it is not possible to construct a diagnosis about the true impact that these entities cause of living beings and the environment. For this reason, from a first approach, the different mechanisms and dynamics of interaction and accumulation in an interfacial surface with a molecular agents, they were modeled [12]. For this purpose, a gold film fcc(111) as the interfacial surface was chosen. From the results obtained with this simplified model, a model of interaction between biological interface and cations Pb2+ is presented. This model allows to advance in the understanding of the processes of interaction and adsorption of heavy metals in biological surfaces and specifically in the dynamics and processes related to the bioaccumulation of lead in fish.