Abstract
Remedial guidelines for petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) in soil aid in the mitigation of risks to human health and the environmental. However, some remediation guidelines may overestimate the potential for adverse effects to native plant species, contributing to unnecessary remedial efforts in attempts to meet the guidelines. At sites where PHC-contaminated soils undergo weathering, some PHCs may persist but with decreased bioavailability to organisms. In this study, the toxicity of both coarse and fine-grained subarctic soils, contaminated with weathered PHCs were assessed using five native plant species (Picea mariana, Achillea millefolium, Alnus viridis, Elymus trachycaulus and Salix bebbiana). Soil toxicity tests were conducted in a growth chamber with parameters set to simulate the site’s subarctic climate conditions. Reference toxicant tests using boric acid were conducted to provide confidence in the interpretation of the results for the PHC-contaminated soils, and also provide new information on the sensitivities of the four boreal species to boric acid. All plants exhibited reduced growth and germination rates as boric acid concentrations increased. Despite exceeding the Canada-wide standard guidelines for Fraction 3 PHCs, field-collected contaminated soils had no significant negative impacts on the growth (i.e., length, dry weight and emergence) of any of the plant species tested.
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Data availability
Data recorded during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
S. bebbiana seeds were provided (in-kind) by the National Tree Seed Centre in Fredericton, NB. We thank the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) for provision of plant seeds and Mary Moody (then at the SRC) for her early involvement in the project, including identifying candidate plant tests species and development of pre-treatment and test duration. We thank the Advisian staff that supported this project over the years, specifically Ann Glatiotis who initiated the original program. Special thanks to Ariane Mayrand Nicol for her assistance in conducting the experiments. We thank Dr. Iris Koch and Dr. Graham Cairns for their careful review of the manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by Imperial Oil Limited and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Collaborative Research and Development Grant (grant # 514935-17).
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Conceptualization: AP, SB, EH, AR and BZ; Methodology; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Validation; Visualization; and Writing—original draft: AP; Writing—review and editing: SB, AG, EH, AR and BZ; Funding acquisition; Project administration; and Supervision: AR and BZ.
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Pang, A., Rutter, A., Bordenave, S. et al. Assessment of the toxicity of weathered petroleum hydrocarbon impacted soils to native plants from a site in the Canadian Subarctic. Ecotoxicology 31, 1287–1298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-022-02585-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-022-02585-9