Changes of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and polychlorinated biphenyls in surface soils from urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta, in China between 2003 and 2012

Abstract

Surface soil samples were collected from urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), China in 2003 and 2012, respectively. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were analyzed to determine if there were any changes in their levels and compositional profiles between the two sampling years. The concentrations of Σ8PBDEs ranged from 0.553 to 13.0 μg kg(-1)(with the mean of 3.31 μg kg(-1)) in the 2003 samples and from 1.01 to 43.2 μg/kg (with the mean of 10.0 μg kg(-1)) in the 2012 samples. The concentrations of Σ32PCBs ranged from 0.301 to 3.29 μg kg(-1)(with the mean of 1.01 μg kg(-1)) in the 2003 samples and from 0.205 to 3.96 μg/kg (with the mean of 0.991 μg kg(-1)) in the 2012 samples. The comparisons between the 2012 and 2003 data showed that PBDEs concentrations increased over the years, but PCB concentrations did not change much. BDE-209 was the major BDE congener in both the 2003 and 2012 samples, indicating that the dominant PBDE mixture production and usage in the YRD had been the commercial deca-BDE mixture. Investigation of the PBDE congener profiles indicated that there had been new input of octa-BDEs in this region in recent years. Little change was found for the pattern of PCBs congener profiles between 2 years' samples. As such, spatial distributions of PBDEs or PCBs in surface soil samples reflected a gradient (from high to low) from the central cities out to rural areas in both the 2003 and 2012 data. In addition, high concentrations of PBDEs were observed in the industrial and residential areas, whereas high concentrations of PCBs were only observed in the industrial areas.

Concentrations and risks of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in transformer oils and the environment of a power plant in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

“…A comparison of the measured concentrations of PCBs with those reported in other studies is usually complex because of the variations in the selected congeners and related statistics. However, the levels of Ʃ14 PCBs in soils from the power plant were comparable to the total PCBs (120,000 μg kg −1 ) around a former telecommunication manufacturing site in south west England [27] and a PCB production site in Sauget, USA (150-27,000 μg kg −1 ) [28], but were higher than the total PCB concentrations found around an electrical transformer in Ghana [29], a chemical factory [30], rural/urban soils [[31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36]], soils around e-waste recycling sites [[37], [38], [39], [40], [41]], mountain soils [42], and soils around industrial sites [1]. The Σ14 PCB concentrations in the transformer oils were higher than those (nd-48.33 mg kg −1 ) found in transformer oils from Korea [16].…”

Magnetic Biochar Mediates BDE-153 Accumulation and Metabolism in Rice (Oryza sativa L.) by Modulating Iron Plaque and the Fatty Acid Profile

“…Three rice seedlings of uniform size were transferred into a glass jar containing 180 mL of full-strength Hoagland’s solution to acclimatize for 10 days prior to BDE-153 and MBC exposures. Rice seedlings were exposed to 10 μg/L BDE-153, which is an environmentally relevant concentration in soils, − as well as different doses of MBC (1:2 and 2:4) ranging from 0.65 to 6.7 g/L for 10 days; the same doses of BC were also established for comparison. The designed MBC/BC doses were relatively lower than the practical dosage for soil use − because MBC and BC under hydroponic conditions were more available for BDE-153 and rice.…”

Sustainable development of urban agglomeration based on material metabolism: a case study on Fujian Delta, China

“…Research on the social and economic aspects of urban agglomerations focused on the stability of the spatial structure (Fang et al, 2007 ), accessibility of traffic (Wei et al, 2018 ), industrial structure (Li et al, 2019a ), and economic efficiency (Ma et al, 2019 ). Research on the interaction between urban agglomerations and ecological environment involves the coordination between the development of urban agglomerations and environmental factors, such as atmosphere (Zheng et al, 2018 ), water (Zhao et al, 2017 ) and soil (Shi et al, 2015 ), regional thermal environment (Li et al, 2019b ; Zhou et al, 2018a ), efficiency of carbon emission (Liu et al, 2018 ), the coupling relationship between urbanization and environment (Fang et al, 2019 ), the relationship between the development of urban agglomerations and ecosystem services (Zhou et al, 2018b ), and ecological efficiency of urban agglomerations (Ren et al, 2019 ). Research focused on revealing the external performance characteristics of related environmental problems, whereas minimal exploration is made on the internal metabolic mechanism of urban agglomerations and the interaction between the environment and the economic system (Chen et al, 2021b ).…”