Contamination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in surface sediments of mangrove swamps

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon fingerprints in the Pichavaram mangrove–estuarine sediments, southeastern India

“…In contrast, HMW PAHs are produced due to pyrolytic activities (Fernandes et al, 1997). The abundance of LMW/HMW PAHs can therefore be used to distinguish the different PAH sources in sediments (Tam et al, 2001;Choudhary and Routh, 2010). In general, HMW PAHs are more abundant over LMW PAHs in river and marine sediments (Guo et al, 2007;Yan et al, 2009).…”

PCBs and PAHs in sea-surface microlayer and sub-surface water samples of the Venice Lagoon (Italy)

“…It can be observed that the majority of particulate samples (both SSW and SML) fall into the pyrolytic zone, whilst the dissolved ones are more diffuse and therefore a source cannot be assigned. Moreover at station 1 there is a very good correlation between Phe/An (r = 0.97) and Flu/Py (r = 0.96) using all samples but at station 2 it is very low (in both cases r is less than 0.45) so it can be supposed that there must be many perturbing factors, such as miscellaneous sources and processes, as well as fresh oil spillage from motorized boats and the occurrence of selective photo-degradation or biodegradation affecting the different PAH (Tam et al, 2001).…”

Distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments from Yellow River Estuary and Yangtze River Estuary, China

“…Anthropogenic PAHs can be introduced to estuaries via urban runoff (McCready et al, 2000), industrial processes (Simpson et al, 1996), vehicle exhausts and spillage of fossil fuel (Pettersen et al, 1997;Wang et al, 1999) in the upper and middle reach areas. Due to their hydrophobic nature (logK ow , 3-8), once PAHs are introduced into the estuarine environment, they were rapidly adsorbed onto suspended particles and hence bottom sediments (Tam et al, 2001;Nogami et al, 2002). Estuarine sediment which contains large pools of organic matter can be a significant repository for PAHs (Pereira et al, 1999).…”