Historical record and source apportionment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the Lianhuan Lake sediments

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in a sediment core from the north Lianhuan Lake were collected to investigate its historical changes in the last one hundred years and its possible influence on ecological system in the lake. GC-MS was used to determine the concentrations of PAHs, and sediment chronological age was examined by (137)Cs dating approach. The concentrations of 16 different kinds of PAHs in the sediment samples ranged from 297 to 1,327 ng g(-1), and the low molecular weight (LMW) were predominant. The intensification of industrial and anthropogenic activities in the Daqing oil field may play the key role in the increase of PAHs concentrations in the late 1950s. To the early 1980s, the PAHs concentrations significantly decreased due to the grain size coarsening in the sediment samples, which was confirmed by the precipitation information. The 5-6 rings PAHs concentrations increased in the early 1980s may be attributed to the consumption of petroleum, coal and wood. The results showed that both the PAHs historical record and current concentrations may cause some influence on the Lianhuan Lake ecological system. The toxicology research on this ecological system should be done in the further investigations for determining the PAHs damage on human and ecological system health.

History of Fuel Consumption Inferred from Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Sediments from the South Lianhuan Lake, Northeast China

“…Higher molecular weight PAHs (HMW, 4-6 ring) especially 5 and 6-ring PAHs were less prevalent, accounted for a mean of only 1.44 %. These results are consistent with our previous study of PAHs in core sediments in north Lianhuan Lake, where the concentrations of PAHs ranged from 297 to 1,328 ng/g with the LMW components predominated (Sun et al 2011). …”

“…As previously reported (Sun et al 2011), the petroleum source of PAHs in the Lianhuan Lake area are thought to result from the lake being adjacent to the Daqing Oilfield and the spilled oil from drilling and transportation processes may result in the accumulated of petroleum in the sediments of the lake. In the current study, the environmental impact of the oilfield was further investigated.…”

Distribution and sources of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the sediments of the Pearl River estuary, China

“…The sediments with higher TOC appeared to exhibit relative the higher PAHs. Previous studies also indicated that PAHs accumulations in the sediments were positively correlated with TOC (Sun et al 2011). Besides, black carbon (BC) also benefited PAHs deposition within the sediments (Bucheli et al 2004;Oen et al 2006;Agarwal and Bucheli 2011).…”

Distribution and sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments of the Mai Po Inner Deep Bay Ramsar Site in Hong Kong

“…The concentrations of PAHs in sediments were affected by chemical composition of the sediments such as organic matter and clay contents (Kim et al 1999;Sun et al 2011). In the present study, a significant positive correlation was found between the total organic carbon and the total PAHs concentrations for all the Inner Deep Bay sediment samples with a correlation coefficient value (r) of 0.384 (p \ 0.0001, n = 40) (Fig.…”