Health risk of semi-volatile organic pollutants in Wujin river inflow into Taihu Lake

Abstract

Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalates and pesticides in water of Wujin river inflow into Taihu Lake, were detected for assessment of risk to human health. SVOCs were tested with Method 525.2 established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and health risk assessment (HRA) was conducted by the hazard quotient (HQ) approach from US HRA for screening stage. The results for the liquid-solid extraction of water sample measured by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) showed that three of the tested twenty-three semi-volatile organic contaminants posed potential health risk and the concentrations of 2,4-dinitrotoluene, di-n-butyl phthalate, chrysene and benzo(a)anthracene was 0.736, 15.201, 0.307, and 0.334 μg/l, respectively. SVOCs in the Wujin river water might induce risk to environmental health of Taihu Lake as a source of drinking water.

Phthalate occurrence in rivers and tap water from central Spain

“…The maximum detected (1759 ng/L) (RSP-1) falls between the maximum values reported by Regueiro et al (2008) for river water in NW Spain (b415 ng/L) and those reported by Sánchez-Avila et al (2009) for surface waters in Catalonia, NE Spain (33,600 ng/L). In other studies conducted outside Spain, such as that of He et al (2011) for the Yangtze river in China, the values obtained were lower, whereas in other international studies (Bastos and Haglund, 2012;Olujimi et al, 2012;Tang et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2011) higher DBP concentrations than those found in the present study were found (Table 4). The fact that this phthalate was the highest contributor to the contamination detected is because it is one of the most widely used in plastics industry manufacturing processes and therefore it is the most commonly found phthalate in the manufactured products mentioned above (Kimber and Dearman, 2010).…”

“…Some international studies have detected these compounds in wastewater (Olujimi et al, 2012), river water (He et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2011;Tang et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013), seawater (Martí et al, 2011) and even in sediments (Bastos et al, 2012), and they have occasionally been detected in drinking water (Al-Saleh et al, 2011;Amiridou and Voutsa, 2011;Tang et al, 2012;Dévier et al, 2013;Blanchard et al, 2013). In the few studies published in Spain, phthalates have been analysed in wastewater, seawater and sediments (Chaler et al, 2004;Bartolomé et al, 2005;Sánchez-Avila et al, 2009;Sánchez-Avila et al, 2011;Sánchez-Avila et al, 2012), as well as in river and drinking water (tap or bottled) (Regueiro et al, 2008;Sánchez-Avila et al, 2011;Bono-Blay et al, 2012;Sánchez-Avila et al, 2012), with most such studies concentrating on the NE Mediterranean region.…”

Phthalate esters in main source water and drinking water of Zhejiang Province (China): Distribution and health risks

“…Table shows phthalate ester concentrations in source water and drinking water determined in recent years. Some studies have shown higher concentrations in some rivers . However, the present results were similar to most of the reports on phthalate esters in source water in China and in other countries .…”

Characteristics and Health Risk Assessment of Semi-Volatile Organic Contaminants in Rural Pond Water of Hebei Province

“…For S5, phenol, m-cresol, and p-cresol were the dominant pollutants, accounting for 91% of the total concentration. Compared with other surveyed rivers in China, the concentrations of detectable SVOCs in this study (3113 ng/L) were lower than those found in the Yangtze (5344.5 ng/L) [28] and Wujin (24,845 ng/L) rivers [25], but they were higher than the Lhasa River (1980 ng/L) [6] and Yellow Sea (204.24 ng/L) [23]. This indicates that the pond water in this studied area might have contained a medium level of SVOCs.…”

“…For example, individual organic compounds of drinking water in Huaihe River have posed a relatively high cancer risk to human health [24]. The method for human health risk assessment recommended by the USEPA has been applied to determine the potential adverse effects posed on humans by pollutants [24,25], but the hazards posed by chemical mixtures are challenging to evaluate because the toxicity pathways of many chemicals are not known. Considering the worst cases, some studies have calculated the sum of hazard quotients for each compound, to estimate the combined risks of mixture components [26,27].…”