Aromatic Hydrocarbons as Implication from Fingerprints and Their Impact to The Oil Pollution in The Suez Gulf, Egypt

Abstract

Chemical fingerprinting is an aspect of environmental forensic investigation which involves chemical analysis of contaminants and associated chemicals to provide source-specific information. In this research, ten fish species from the Suez Gulf region were subjected to the total concentration of 16-PAHs ranging from 81.499 to 5895.608 ng/g wet ng/g. wet wt., and chemical fingerprinting employing some of the quantitative diagnostic ratios with the aim of ascertaining the precise nature and source of the contaminants. PAHs fingerprinting involves the determination of a number of quantitative diagnostic ratios of source-specific marker PAH compounds. These quantitative diagnostic ratios may be used to distinguish petrogenic PAHs including phenanthrene/anthracene; benz (a) anthracene/chrysene; fluoranthene/ pyrene; phenanthrene/(phenanthrene +anthracene) and indeno (1,2,3-cd) pyrene/indeno (1,2,3-cd) pyrene + benzo (ghi) perylene from other sources. It was found that the PAHs contamination in the Suez Gulf is not only emanating from petrogenic sources but other multiple sources contribute significantly.