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Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls in soils of Mayabeque, Cuba

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Abstract

Cuba is a country in transition with a considerable potential for economic growth. Soils are recipients and integrators of chemical pollution, a frequent negative side effect of increasing industrial activities. Therefore, we established a soil monitoring network to monitor polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soils of Mayabeque, a Cuban province southeast of Havana. Concentrations of the sum of the 16 US EPA PAHs and of the seven IRMM PCBs in soils from 39 locations ranged from 20 to 106 μg kg−1 and from 1.1 to 7.6 μg kg−1, respectively. While such concentrations can be considered as low overall, they were in several cases correlated with the distance of sampling sites to presumed major emission sources, with some of the concomitantly investigated source diagnostic PAH ratios, and with black carbon content. The presented data adds to the limited information on soil pollution in the Caribbean region and serves as a reference time point before the onset of a possible further industrial development in Cuba. It also forms the basis to set up and adapt national environmental standards.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of the project “Establishing a soil monitoring network to assess the environmental exposure to PAHs and PCBs in the province of Mayabeque, Cuba (Soil-Q),” within the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme). We thank the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for financial support. We are further thankful to the Swiss Embassy and the Swiss Cooperation Office in Havana for administrative and logistic assistance. Thanks are also due to various Cuban institutions for their support, the “land owners,” and the team of the Analytic Unit of CENSA for their assistance in soil sampling and sample preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Nacional de Sanidad Agropecuaria (CENSA), Apartado 10, CP 32700, San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque, Cuba

    Dayana Sosa, Roberto Faure, Osvaldo Fonseca & Arturo Escobar

  2. Environmental Analytics, Agroscope, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046, Zurich, Switzerland

    Isabel Hilber, Nora Bartolomé & Thomas D. Bucheli

  3. Department of Environmental System Science, ETH Zurich, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland

    Nora Bartolomé

  4. Swiss National Soil Monitoring Network, Agroscope, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046, Zurich, Switzerland

    Armin Keller & Peter Schwab

Authors
  1. Dayana Sosa
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  2. Isabel Hilber
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  3. Roberto Faure
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  4. Nora Bartolomé
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  5. Osvaldo Fonseca
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  6. Armin Keller
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  7. Peter Schwab
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  8. Arturo Escobar
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  9. Thomas D. Bucheli
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Correspondence to Arturo Escobar or Thomas D. Bucheli.

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Sosa, D., Hilber, I., Faure, R. et al. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls in soils of Mayabeque, Cuba. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 12860–12870 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-8810-2

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