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Concentrations and risk assessment of polychlorinated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in surface sediments from the East Lake, China

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Abstract

The concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in surface sediment samples collected from the East Lake, China in winter 2012 and summer 2013 were analyzed in this study. The total PCB and PBDE concentrations ranged from not detected to 107.1 ng g−1 dw and from 9.7 to 151.3 ng g−1 dw, respectively. PCB-28, 101 and 180 were dominant congeners in both winter and summer. BDE-28 (44 %) was the dominant congener in winter and summer, followed by BDE-99 (28 %) and BDE-47 (26 %). The concentrations of PCBs in the sediment samples collected in summer were higher than those in winter, while the concentrations of PBDEs did not show much seasonal variations. Source analysis showed that the PCBs probably originated from urban runoff, industrial pollution and atmospheric deposition, and the PBDEs probably originated from historical usage of penta-BDE mixtures. Potential eco-toxicological risks caused by PCBs were found in about 5 % of the sampling sites; PBDEs had moderate eco-toxicological risk in 80 % sampling sites in the East Lake, China.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported in part by Open Funding Project of the Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Open Funding Project of The State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science (2013B115), Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province of China (No. 2012FFB07301), and the Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y329671K01).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Xiaoyan Yun, Yuyi Yang, Minxia Liu & Jun Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xiaoyan Yun & Minxia Liu

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  1. Xiaoyan Yun
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  2. Yuyi Yang
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Correspondence to Jun Wang.

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Yun, X., Yang, Y., Liu, M. et al. Concentrations and risk assessment of polychlorinated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in surface sediments from the East Lake, China. Ecotoxicology 24, 172–180 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1370-z

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