Polychlorinated biphenyls in the drinking water source of the Yangtze River: characteristics and risk assessment

Abstract

Background: As the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River flows through the most industrialized cities in China and provides critical ecological services for agriculture, industry, and transportation. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been banned for many years, but trace amounts of PCBs still exist as persistent organic pollutant in drinking water and are an ecotoxicological problem. In this work, we collected water, sediment, and suspended particulate matter (SPM) samples along the Yangtze River, to study the distribution and transport of PCBs for the risk assessment of the Yangtze River as a drinking water source.Results: The ΣPCBs concentrations in water, sediment, and SPM ranged in 0.04-11 ng/L, 0.33-69 ng/g, and 0.72-153 ng/L, respectively. The main pollutants were PCB17, 18, 28, 47, and 118 in the Yangtze River. The ff SW value of PCB18 and PCB28 all exceeded 0.50, whereas the ff SW value of PCB47 and PCB118 (except for PCB118 at Y-4) was less than 0.50. The toxic equivalent quantity (TEQ) range of PCBs in water and in sediment was ND-5.55 pg-TEQ/L and ND-2.51 pg-TEQ/g, respectively. Conclusions:In both water and sediment, lower chlorinated PCBs are dominant in the middle reaches and higher chlorinated PCBs are dominant at downstream. In contrast, SPM is dominated by tetra-CBs. The ff SW values reveal a net redissolution of lower PCBs from sediments to water but a net sorption of higher PCBs from water to sediment. The PCBs in water and sediment at downstream pose potential ecological risk, but the drinking water does not have a non-carcinogenic risk for humans.

Organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls in city drains in Makurdi, central Nigeria: Seasonal variations, source apportionment and risk assessment

“…Reductive dechlorination of higher PCB congeners under anoxic conditions might be another reason for higher levels of lower PCB congeners in the water and sediment from this study. These findings were consistent with other reports [ 78 , 80 ]. Leakages of PCBs from PCB-containing materials such as capacitors and old transformers at various locations in the Makurdi city might enter the open drains through runoff during rains, constituting another important source of PCBs in the studied sites.…”

Towards miniaturized electrochemical sensors for monitoring of polychlorinated biphenyls

“…Routine reporting on contamination of the environment with PCBs serves as a way of tracking pollution sources with a view to eliminate them 18 . Their separation and detection in the environmental samples has been achieved by use of chromatographic techniques with electron capture detector (GC-ECD) or mass spectrometer as the detection systems 10 , 19 , 20 and recently the sensitive and selective high and low resolution mass-spectrometry (HR/LS-MS) 21 , 22 . These techniques are highly sensitive and have been able to provide the required information albeit with high cost implications that do not favor routine monitoring.…”

Seasonal distributions and risk assessment of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the surficial sediments from the Turag River, Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…Then, these sediments bound contaminants are carried away through incorporating with trophic level e.g., consumption of benthic organisms by fish (Bjermo et al 2013). Again, sediment can resuspend with changes in environmental components, and then be released back into the water and begin another cycle of environmental contamination and may end up in the food chain (Cui et al 2020). Therefore, the surface sediments show the current PCBs contamination levels in the river (Baqar et al 2017).…”