Integrated characterization and risk management of marine sediments: The case study of the industrialized Bagnoli area (Naples, Italy)

Highly Contaminated Marine Sediments Can Host Rare Bacterial Taxa Potentially Useful for Bioremediation

“…Bagnoli-Coroglio, in the Gulf of Naples (Mediterranean Sea), is a typical example of a coastal area highly contaminated by metals and hydrocarbons, which have been released for decades by industrial activities and stopped at the beginning of 1990s (Romano et al, 2004(Romano et al, , 2008(Romano et al, , 2018Arienzo et al, 2017;Trifuoggi et al, 2017;Armiento et al, 2020;Morroni et al, 2020). However, other sources of contamination, including urban and sewage discharge, continue to affect the coastal area, which is thus exposed to multiple forms of human pressure deriving from both past and recent activities (Bertocci et al, 2019).…”

“…Recent data show that the concentrations and distribution of contaminants in the sediments have remained quite constant over the last 15 years, even if organic and inorganic contaminants have been spreading especially northward along the coast and toward the open sea in the area in front of the piers of the dismissed ILVA steel plant (Armiento et al, 2020). Despite the urgent need for remediation and management actions in the coastal area of Bagnoli-Coroglio, no active remediation of the contaminated marine sediments has been attempted to date (Morroni et al, 2020).…”

Source Apportionment Assessment of Marine Sediment Contamination in a Post-Industrial Area (Bagnoli, Naples)

“…This area became a key site for twentieth-century Italian economic growth through industrial plants that produced steel and cement using iron ore and coal transported from other locations and processed on site. These activities, now recognized as detrimental to the environment and economically impractical, prompted the industrial area to be dismantled starting in the mid-1990's [2]. The impact of heavy industries was never completely remediated, however, and this negligence results in high concentrations of PAHs and trace metals in marine sediments [3].…”

“…Recent work has focused on bioaccumulation and biomarkers investigations to better understand the toxic effects and mechanism of action of contaminants [10][11][12]. Recently, an integrated assessment called sediment quality triad (SQT) was used to consider chemical analyses and biological effects as different lines of evidence (LOEs) to describe environmental quality of marine sediments [2,13]. A multidisciplinary approach (the weight of evidence approach, WoE) permits researchers to interpret various environmental conditions compared to a univariate analysis, such as a chemical approach, and circumvent overestimated and costly management decisions [11].…”

“…A multidisciplinary approach (the weight of evidence approach, WoE) permits researchers to interpret various environmental conditions compared to a univariate analysis, such as a chemical approach, and circumvent overestimated and costly management decisions [11]. The WoE approach, integrating five lines of evidence (LOEs: sediment chemistry, bioavailability of chemicals, subcellular effects, toxicity at organism level and at the community level) was successfully applied to the Bagnoli case study and revealed a clearly polluted area but less critical levels of pollution when compared to the results of sediment chemistry alone [2].…”