Impact of historical contamination on meiofaunal assemblages: The case study of the Bagnoli-Coroglio Bay (southern Tyrrhenian Sea)

Source Apportionment Assessment of Marine Sediment Contamination in a Post-Industrial Area (Bagnoli, Naples)

“…This study confirms that a multivariate statistical analysis (PCA/FA) approach can be extremely effective in assessing the apportionment of contaminant sources, even in a site with a complex geological characteristic and a long historical industrial development. With respect to the previous studies (e.g., [3,4,6,7,18]) which used similar methods to investigate the sediments or biota ( [31,33,34]), this study considers a larger portion of the Gulf of Bagnoli, and it investigates the relationship of metals/PAHs with both the hydrodynamics of the Gulf and potential discharges/sources. Additionally, while studies in literature considered mostly the sum of total PAHs, in this study 18 PAH compounds are considered individually as their contamination pattern in the gulf.…”

“…A total of 11 heavy metals (i.e., Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn) and 18 PAHs (i.e., naphthalene, anthracene, phenanthrene, acenaphthylene, acenaphthene, fluorene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo(a)anthracene, chrysene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene, benzo(ghi)perylene, dibenz(ah)anthracene, benz(j)fluoranthene, benz(e)pyrene) indicated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as important toxicological contaminants were considered. All the samples and the analytical determination derive from the series of studies conducted under the framework of the ABBaCo project [4,33]. Contaminants general statistics are reported in Table 1.…”

“…Some studies report the advantages of using multivariate statistical analysis [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] to interpret the contaminant distributions and the pollutants patterns. For the marine environment, some studies use principal component analysis (PCA) [7,15,[28][29][30] and bivariate correlation analysis (Pearson coefficient) [31,32], nonparametric multivariate multiple regression analyses [33,34], canonical analysis of principal coordinates [33], multivariate linkage tree analysis [34] and randomized analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) [8,33,34] to investigate the co-occurrence of a suite of pollutants in sediments and to assess the related response on the biological assemblages that inhabit the seabed. Some correlation analyses were carried out between pollutant concentrations and sediment granulometry [31].…”

“…Some correlation analyses were carried out between pollutant concentrations and sediment granulometry [31]. Other studies examined the distribution patterns of the meiofauna and the diversity and abundance of microorganisms inhabiting the sediments of GoP in relation to environmental variation and chemical pollution [8,33,34]. Most PAH inputs in the environment are linked to anthropogenic activity (e.g., wastes from industrialized and urbanized areas, off-shore petroleum hydrocarbons production or petroleum transportation) [35].…”

The Paradox of an Unpolluted Coastal Site Facing a Chronically Contaminated Industrial Area

“…The Mediterranean coasts host more than 200 petrochemical plants, energy installations and chemical plants (Civili, 2010) and only less than 1% of the total area remains relatively unaffected by human activities (Micheli et al, 2013). In most cases, despite the closure of industrial plants for many years, the ceased release of pollutants into the sea and/or the implementation of environmental regulations, the contamination still persists (Romano et al, 2004;Croudace et al, 2015;Gambi et al, 2020a).…”