Biological pollution

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Biological pollution (impacts or bio pollution) is the impact of humanity's actions on the quality of aquatic and terrestrial environment. Specifically, biological pollution is the introduction of non-indigenous and invasive species,^[1] otherwise known as Invasive Alien Species (IAS). When the biological pollution is introduced to an aquatic environment, it contributes to water pollution.

Biopollution may cause adverse effects at several levels of biological organization:

• an individual organism (internal pollution by parasites or pathogens),
• a population (by genetic change, i.e. hybridization of IAS with a native species),
• a community or biocoenosis (by structural shifts, i.e. dominance of IAS, replacement or elimination of native species),
• a habitat (by modification of physical-chemical conditions),
• an ecosystem (by alteration of energy and organic material flow).

Biopollution may also cause decline in naturalness of nature conservation areas, adverse economic consequences and impacts on human health. The notion of "biological pollution" and "biological pollutants" described by Elliott (2003)^[2] is generally accepted in invasion biology; it was used to develop the concept of biopollution level assessment (Olenin et al., 2007^[3]) and criteria for a Good Ecological Status descriptor in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (Olenin et al., 2010)^[4]

The magnitude of the bioinvasion impact or biopollution level (Olenin et al., 2007^[3]) may be quantified using a free online service BINPAS.

In 1991 The Indiana Academy of Science held a national cross disciplinary conference in Indianapolis (McKnight 1993), the first of its find dealing with the issue.