Distribution, sources, and potential toxicological significance of PAHs in drinking water sources within the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region is one of the most population-dense areas in China. The safety of its drinking source water is essential to human health. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have attracted attention from the scientific community and the general public due to their toxicity and wide distribution in the global environment. In this work, PAHs pollution levels from the drinking source water in nine main cities within the PRD were investigated. P 15 PAHs concentrations during the wet season varied from 32.0 to 754.8 ng L À1 in the dissolved phase, and from 13.4 to 3017.8 ng L À1 in the particulate phase. During the dry season, dissolved PAHs ranged from 48.1 to 113.6 ng L À1 , and particulate PAHs from 8.6 to 69.6 ng L À1 . Overall, P 15 PAHs concentrations were extremely high in the XC and ZHQ stations during the wet season in 2008 and 2009. In most sites, PAHs originated from mixed sources. Hazard ratios based on non-cancerous and cancerous risks were extremely higher in XC compared with the others during the wet season, though they were much less than 1. Nevertheless, risks caused by the combined toxicity of P 15 PAHs and other organics should be seriously considered. PAHs toxic equivalent quantities ranged from 0.508 to 177.077 ng L À1 .

Status of PAHs in Environmental Compartments of South Africa: A Country Report

“…Naphthalene and pyrene both had very similar composition. The % composition patterns found here are not very different from those reported by An et al (25) who found out that 3-ring PAHs were most dominant in most cases followed by 4-ring PAHs and 2-ring PAHs. Acenaphthene and phenanthrene are both 3-ring PAHs while naphthalene has 2-rings.…”

“…This shows how PAH pollution is wide spread in the country as PAHs are a global pollutant (4). An et al (25) studied the distribution, sources, and potential toxicological significance of PAHs in drinking water sources within the Pearl River Delta in China. The sum of 15 PAHs studied ranged from 58.8-3159.9 ng −1 (25).…”

“…An et al (25) studied the distribution, sources, and potential toxicological significance of PAHs in drinking water sources within the Pearl River Delta in China. The sum of 15 PAHs studied ranged from 58.8-3159.9 ng −1 (25). These results compare to those from the Johannesburg area by Sibiya et al (17,18) but are less than those reported from the Vaal River and Venda regions.…”

Distribution profile, health risk and elimination of model atmospheric SVOCs associated with a typical municipal garbage compressing station in Guangzhou, South China

“…All samples were analyzed using an Agilent Technologies 7890A gas chromatography coupled with a 5975C mass spectrometer detector (GC-MSD) following documented methods (An et al, 2011b;Qiao et al, 2010;Zeng et al, 2008) with slight modification. A HP-5MS silica fused capillary column (30 m  250 mm  0.25 mm) was applied for three groups of analytes in this study.…”

Distribution, possible sources, and health risk assessment of SVOC pollution in small streams in Pearl River Delta, China

“…SVOCs such as PAHs and OCPs have been frequently detected in the PRD region (Guo et al 2008;An et al 2011;Feng et al 2012), whereas the small rivers in this region have not been investigated. Compared to the main river, the small rivers are more closely connected to the pollution sources and weaker in self-cleaning capacity.…”