Complementary Approaches to Assess the Environmental Quality of Estuarine Sediments

Abstract

An assessment of the environmental quality of sediments at several locations of the Ría de Pontevedra (NW of Spain) was performed by integrating toxicity data obtained from multiespecies bioassays, chemical data from analysis of mussels and sediment, and physical-chemical parameters of the sampled sites. Subsequently, a toxicity identification evaluation (TIE) method intended for characterization and identification of the toxic agents was applied to the most polluted location by using the Paracentrotus lividus sea urchin bioassay. Both metals and organic compounds seem to be the causative agents of toxicity in elutriates of the studied sediment. Finally, multivariate statistics were applied for a better interpretation of results. A factor analysis was developed to establish the relationship among variables and to derive local sediment quality guidelines (SQG) by linking chemical contamination to biological effects. When multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were performed to group the locations according to either the chemistry or toxicity data, P3-site was always clearly broken up the others. The different approaches all supported the same conclusion: site P3 can be considered highly contaminated by both trace metals and PAHs resulting in high toxicity for all the tested species.

Integrative sediment assessment at Atlantic Spanish harbours by means of chemical and ecotoxicological tools

“…However, Baumard et al (1998) and Fernández et al (2008), highlighted that SQGs calculated by Long et al (1995) could be excessively high for our region. Therefore, in this study the SQGs calculated by Riba et al (2004a) for the Atlantic coast of Spain have been also included.…”

“…Besides, the European Water Framework Directive (WFD; EU WFD (2000)) aims to establish a new legislative framework for Community action in order to manage, use, protect and restore continental, transitional (estuaries) and coastal waters in Europe (Borja 2005;Quevauviller 2007). In this context, the integration of both, biological effect measurements and traditional chemical methods, is being considered increasingly important for the proper assessment of environmental quality and for the management of contaminated materials (Borja et al 2004;Chapman and Anderson 2005;Fernández et al 2008).…”

Application of the Sea Urchin Embryo Test in Toxicity Evaluation and Effect-Directed Analysis of Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluents

“…Enhanced growth inhibition at Ga3 might be driven by byproducts formed during the advanced treatment . Comparable results were obtained by Rueda-Márquez et al, who applied the SET bioassay to study the viability of H 2 O 2 /UV photolysis.…”

“…Each cartridge was sequentially conditioned with 5 mL of acetone, 5 mL of ethyl acetate (EtOAc), 5 mL of methanol (MeOH), and 5 mL of ultrapure water. In the case of Ga3, sodium thiosulfate (30 mg/L) was added to the raw sample prior to performing the SPE to neutralize the presence of chlorine . A maximum of 500 mL of each effluent sample was passed through each cartridge (several cartridges were used in parallel) assisted by a vacuum pump at ca.…”

Prospective ecological risk assessment of sediment resuspension in an estuary

“…Metals in sediments (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Pb) were determined by using a sequential X-ray spectrometer (Siemens SRS 3000, Siemens AG, Germany) in dry samples ground in an agate mill down to <100 mm grain size. 20 Quantification was made by comparing with a calibration curve obtained with 25 international reference geological samples such as PACS-2 and MESS-3 (National Research Council, Canada). Analyses were conducted by CACTI (University of Vigo, Spain).…”