To identify potential sources and accumulation features concentrations, profiles, and patterns of polychlorinated naphthalene (PCN) residues were determined in sediment, mussel, crab, plankton, and fishes from the Gdan ˜sk Basin, Baltic Sea. Different marine organisms of the lower food web clearly bioaccumulate many PCN congeners. Depending on the matrix type, PCNs substituted with four or five chlorines dominate. Due to the characteristic profile and pattern of PCN congener groups found in subsurface plankton, mussel, and surface sediments, deposition from the atmosphere is postulated to be the main source of these pollutants. Nineteen of 22 tetra-, all 14 penta-, 9 of 10 hexa-, and both hepta-CNs could be quantified in the samples. The patterns of tetra-, penta-, and hexa-CNs varied largely between the samples or groups of the samples as well as when compared to the technical PCNs formulation Halowax 1014. This implies different absorption/retention rates and/or marked, structure-dependent metabolism of some PCN congeners by marine species.

Tris(4-chlorophenyl)methane (TCPM-H) and tris(4-chlorophenyl)methanol (TCPM-OH) were identified and quantified in fishes (4.1−37 ng/g lipids), fish-eating birds (120−630 ng/g), and marine mammals (13−31 ng/g) from the southern part of the Baltic Sea as well as in the egg and tissues of white-tailed sea eagles from the Baltic coastal (<13−130 000 ng/g) and inland (<1−1500 ng/g) breeding areas in Poland. TCPM-H and TCPM-OH were absent (<0.3 ng/g lipids) in a lower food web organism such as Baltic plankton, blue mussel, and crab and in marine and freshwater surface sediment (<0.3 ng/g dry wt). Both compounds in addition to a suite of organochlorine substances were determined using a nondestructive method for extraction and cleanup step with dialysis throughout a semipermeable polyethylene membrane (SPM) and further fractionation of the dialysate aliquot on a Florisil gel column with final separation, indentification, and quantification via capillary gas chromatography and low resolution mass spectrometry (HRGC/LRMS). TCPM-H and TCPM-OH quantified in higher food web organisms such as white-tailed sea eagles and harbor porpoise correlated (p < 0.000001) with DDTs (p,p‘-DDT, p,p‘-DDD, p,p‘-DDE, and p,p‘-DDMU) content. There was no correlation (p > 0.05) between TCPM-H/OH and DDTs in black cormorant and also in 11 species of fish, while a positive (p < 0.05) relationship was found for a selected group of fish including flounder, perch, lamprey, and three-spined stickleback. Similar to fish, marine mammals (such as harbor porpoise), black cormorants, and white-tailed sea eagles apparently bioaccumulate and biomagnify TCPM-H/OH. Both TCPM-H and TCPM-OH are enriched in a marine food web to a higher degree than DDTs, and both these compounds seem to be much more persistent contaminants under environmental conditions than DDT and its analogues.

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