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Basin-scale emission and multimedia fate of triclosan in whole China

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Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the emission and multimedia fate as well as potential risks of triclosan (TCS) in all of 58 basins in China. The results showed that the total usage of TCS in whole China was 100 t/year, and the discharge to the receiving environment was estimated to be 66.1 t/year. The predicted TCS concentrations by the level III fugacity model were within an order of magnitude of the reported measured concentrations. TCS (90.8 %) was discharged into the water compartment and 9.2 % to the soil compartment. The TCS concentration levels in east China were found generally higher than in west China. In addition, the input flux for TCS to seawater was largely attributed to the seasonal variations in advection flows. Preliminary risk assessment showed that medium to high ecological risks for TCS would be expected in the eastern part of China due to the high population density.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the National Science Foundation of China (NFSC 41473105, NSFC U1133005) and National Water Pollution Control Programme (2013ZX07211-006). Thanks go to BG Li at the Peking University for his assistance in modelling. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. This is a Contribution No. 2037 from GIG CAS.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Qian-Qian Zhang, Guang-Guo Ying, Zhi-Feng Chen, Jian-Liang Zhao & You-Sheng Liu

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  1. Qian-Qian Zhang
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  2. Guang-Guo Ying
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  3. Zhi-Feng Chen
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  4. Jian-Liang Zhao
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Correspondence to Guang-Guo Ying.

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Responsible editor: Leif Kronberg

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Detailed description of the model framework and parameters, tables of data and additional figures are available in Supplementary information.

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Zhang, QQ., Ying, GG., Chen, ZF. et al. Basin-scale emission and multimedia fate of triclosan in whole China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 10130–10143 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4218-z

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