Atmospheric polychlorinated biphenyl concentrations and apparent degradation in coastal New Jersey

Persistent organic pollutants in dusts that settled indoors in lower Manhattan after September 11, 2001

“…PCB congener patterns in these two indoor bulk dust samples were dominated by congeners 163+138, 153+132, 180 and 149+123+107 (Figure 1). This congener pattern is in contrast to that found on ambient aerosols in Jersey City, NJ (Brunciak et al, 2001), which were dominated by congeners 163+138, 66+95, 52+43, and 180, generally representing a lighter mixture of PCB congeners than was seen in the two dust samples presented here. However, the patterns of congeners in these two indoor dust samples match the pattern of congeners measured on outdoor dust samples (Lioy et al, 2002;Offenberg et al, 2003).…”

“…After final reduction in volume to 0.5 ml, samples were injected with a solution containing 50 ng of PCB congeners 30 and 204 (2,4,6-trichlorobiphenyl and 2,2 0 ,3,4,4 0 ,5,6,6 0 octachlorobiphenyl, respectively), as internal standards prior to analysis by gas chromatography/electron capture detection on a Hewlett Packard 6890 equipped with a 63 Ni Electron Capture Detector for quantification of 68 polychlorinated biphenyl congeners, hexachlorobenzene, DDTs (4,4 0 -DDE, 2,4 0 -DDT, and 4,4 0 -DDT) and Mirex according to the procedures of Brunciak et al (2001). All compounds were identified and quantified against known concentrations of authentic standards as described by Mullins (1985).…”

“…Furthermore, these concentrations on WTC-related dusts that settled at indoor locations are not different from the measured concentrations of PCBs on ambient aerosols in Jersey City, New Jersey, which averaged 8907760 ng/g (n ¼ 78) over the period of 7/5/98 to 1/19/01. These measurements taken at a station located in Liberty State Park, 3.5 km west/southwest of the WTC, were made as part of the New Jersey Atmospheric Deposition Network (NJADN), and are summarized elsewhere (Brunciak et al, 2001). PCB congener patterns in these two indoor bulk dust samples were dominated by congeners 163+138, 153+132, 180 and 149+123+107 (Figure 1).…”

The oceanic biological pump modulates the atmospheric transport of persistent organic pollutants to the Arctic

“…This will be facilitated by the fact that during the winter the Arctic atmosphere is more permeable to the Atlantic Ocean atmosphere 38 . However, transport of PCBs during the winter can not be quantified here because gas-phase concentrations in the temperate urban/industrial, rural and coastal regions upwind also depend on temperature, showing minimal concentrations during winter [39][40] . The temporal and geographical extent of the biological pump in northern latitudes may be modified by climate change, affecting the balance, cycling and occurrence of POPs in the AO 41 .…”

Atmospheric polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and Pb isotopes at a remote site in Southwestern China: Implications for monsoon-associated transport

“…Meteorological factors (Brunciak et al, 2001) and ambient temperature (Hoff et al, 1992;Wania et al, 1998) are suggested to influence the concentrations of semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) at background sites where point sources are absent. However, Pearson correlation analysis results indicate that local temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and precipitation did not exert statistically significant influence (p N 0.05) on PBDE congeners at this site during our sampling campaign.…”