Copper emissions factors from intensive shrimp aquaculture

Abstract

Emission factors, i.e., the amount of a given pollutant emitted per unit of production goods or production area, are strong tools for estimating pollutant loads to the envi- ronment from a variety of anthropogenic sources, since they can derive a difficult measurable variable (pollutant load) from an easily assessed parameter (e.g., area, amount of goods produced, inhabitants) and have been successfully used at the global (e.g., Nriagu and Pacyna, 1988); regional (e.g., Hutton and Symon, 1986) and local level (e.g., Moli- sani et al., 2004; Lacerda et al., 2006), to estimate pollutant emissions from natural and anthropogenic sources to the environment. Emission factors are also presently used in most countries’ environmental agencies to create and update pollutant inventories statistics (e.g., EEA, 1999; EPA, 2002; Molisani et al., 2004). The fast growth of intensive shrimp farming worldwide and its dependence on large inputs of artificial feed, fertil- izers and of other chemical addictives such as acidity cor- rectors and algaecides have triggered many studies to investigate shrimp farm’s role as nutrient sources to coastal environments which allowed the calculation of emission factors for major nutrients such as N and P (Pa ́ez-Ozuna et al., 2003; Burford et al., 2003). [...]