4. Conclusions
Aquatic organisms accumulate, retain, and transform arsenic species inside their bodies when exposed to it. Therefore, not only contaminated water, but also fishes and other aquatic foods containing arsenic may be potential sources of human health risks. The present study demonstrated the arsenic uptake capacity of arsenic resistant Exiguobacterium which may prove to be a promising candidate towards arsenic removal from the contaminated water. The study also revealed that the bacteria treated water helped the fishes to grow and survive in a normal way with no symptoms of toxicity while long term intake of arsenic altered the hematological and biochemical parameters and caused oxidative damage in C. striata. These results suggest that the present study might be useful in environmental biomonitoring of arsenic contamination and could serve as a model for the removal of toxicants from the contaminated ecosystems.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi for funding the work through INSPIRE fellowship and to Sophisticated Test and Instrumentation Centre (STIC), Cochin for the FTIR analysis. Sophisticated Analytical Instrument Facility of North Eastern Hill University, Shillong is equally acknowledged for SEM facility.