Historical contamination of PAHs, PCBs, DDTs, and heavy metals in Mississippi River Delta, Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay sediment cores

Carbon isotopes and iodine concentrations in a Mississippi River delta core recording land use, sediment transport, and dam building in the river’s drainage basin

“…Interestingly, core 93P13#1, taken from a nearby site (Santschi et al, 2001b), showed similar sedimentation rates over the past 50-100 years based on 210 Pb xs and 239,240 Pu peaks, i.e., 0.7 cm/yr, but did not show decreasing 240 Pu/ 239 Pu ratios below the peak. This suggests that the depositional environment near the site our core (93P13 #2) was taken was uneven, possibly with bottom flows of river sediment fingering out from the delta region.…”

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the water column and sediment core of Deep Bay, South China

“…In the water column, PAH tend to associate with suspended particulate matter and are eventually deposited in sediments (Santschi et al, 2001). Since the deposition of sediments continues over time, sediments can act as geochronometers of the contaminant deposition in the environment as well as of general environmental change over time (Hites et al, 1977;Yamashita et al, 2000;Zhang et al, 2002;Luo et al, 2004;Kannan et al, 2005;Van Metre and Mahler, 2005).…”

Sedimentary record of hydrophobic organic compounds in relation to regional economic development: A study of Taihu Lake, East China

“…In those regions with large scale land transform, however, the accumulation flux of DDTs showed abnormal peaks around the 1990s, and wash-out DDTs from soil was considered to be a possible cause. Specific examples include the North Africa wetlands (Peters et al, 2001), the Pearl River Delta in China and the Mississippi River Delta in the United States (Santschi et al, 2001). PBDEs are a group of brominated compounds that widely used as flame-retardants in furniture and consumer products.…”