A MULTIGENERATION STUDY TO ASCERTAIN THE TOXICOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF GREAT-LAKES SALMON FED TO RATS - STUDY OVERVIEW AND DESIGN

Fish from the Great Lakes can be contaminated with a plethora of indus trial, agricultural, and environmental chemicals. These chemicals have been associated with reproductive and other toxicological effects in fish and fish-eating birds found in the Great Lakes basin. To obtain m ore insight into this association, several laboratory studies have bee n undertaken wherein fish have been incorporated into the experimental diets to determine the effect of their ingestion upon the test animal s. In addition, several human epidemiological studies have found corre lations between Great Lakes fish consumption and effects in neonates w hich have been attributed to polychlorinated biphenyls without any app reciable consideration as to what synergistic or antagonistic effects other chemicals or heavy metals may or may not have contributed to the observed findings. Herein is presented the design of a two-generation feeding-reproduction study that incorporated lyophilized chinook salm on (Oncorhynchus tsawytscha) fillets into the diets of Sprague-Dawley rats. The findings of this study will be presented in the sections whi ch follow. (C) 1998 Academic Press.