ABSTRACT
Regardless of varying bans on their use, organochlorine (OC) insecticides can still be detected in surface and ground water throughout the United States (Schmitt et al., 1990). Organochlorine insecticides have a number of common characteristics that make them problematic. All are lipophilic in nature, and thus concentrate in organisms. The toxicity of OCs varies; however, all act as neurotoxicants and produce both acute and chronic effects in field and laboratory tests (Hoffman et al., 1995; Sobiech and Henry, Chapter 7, this volume). OC insecticides exert deleterious effects on reproductive viability in fish (Nebeker et al., 1974; Leatherland and Sonstegard, 1978) and birds (Kubiak et al., 1989; Bishop et al., 2000), and bioaccumulate and biomagnify within aquatic and terrestrial food chains (Kawano et al., 1988).
