Abstract
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a group of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that have been proven to be harmful to ecosystem and human health. Detailed information about the spatiotemporally distribution of unintentionally produced PCBs (UP-PCBs) is crucial for understanding the environmental fate and associated health risks. However, researches estimating UP-PCBs emissions in China are limited. In this study, source-specific and year-varying emission factor (EF) dataset was used to develop emission inventory of 12 dioxin-like UP-PCBs congeners covering 66 sources in Chinese mainland with spatial resolution of province for 1960 to 2019 and 0.1°×0.1° for 2019. The results indicated that historical national UP-PCBs emission represented an increasing trend until around 1995, and then showed an overall decreasing trend from 1995 to 2019. Cement production was the largest UP-PCBs emission source in Chinese mainland. Geographically, East and North China contributed largest UP-PCBs emission across Chinese mainland. High emission densities were mainly happened in the densely populated and well-developed region such as Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration and Pearl River Delta. Furthermore, highly positive correlations of emission densities with population and GDP densities were identified.
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