Abstract
BackgroundAs the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River flows through the most industrialized cities in China and provides critical ecological services for agriculture, industry, and transportation. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been banned for many years, but trace amounts of PCBs still exist as persistent organic pollutant in drinking water and are an ecotoxicological problem. In this work, we collected water, sediment, and suspended particulate matter (SPM) samples along the Yangtze River, to study the distribution and transport of PCBs for the risk assessment of the Yangtze River as a drinking water source.ResultsThe ΣPCBs concentrations in water, sediment, and SPM ranged in 0.04–11 ng/L, 0.33–69 ng/g, and 0.72–153 ng/L, respectively. The main pollutants were PCB17, 18, 28, 47, and 118 in the Yangtze River. The ffSW value of PCB18 and PCB28 all exceeded 0.50, whereas the ffSW value of PCB47 and PCB118 (except for PCB118 at Y-4) was less than 0.50. The toxic equivalent quantity (TEQ) range of PCBs in water and in sediment was ND–5.55 pg-TEQ/L and ND–2.51 pg-TEQ/g, respectively.ConclusionsIn both water and sediment, lower chlorinated PCBs are dominant in the middle reaches and higher chlorinated PCBs are dominant at downstream. In contrast, SPM is dominated by tetra-CBs. The ffSW values reveal a net redissolution of lower PCBs from sediments to water but a net sorption of higher PCBs from water to sediment. The PCBs in water and sediment at downstream pose potential ecological risk, but the drinking water does not have a non-carcinogenic risk for humans.
Highlights
As the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River flows through the most industrialized cities in China and provides critical ecological services for agriculture, industry, and transportation
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) levels in the water, sediment, and suspended particulate matter (SPM) Additional file 1: Table S1 lists the total concentrations of PCBs (ΣPCBs) and predominant PCB congeners in the water, sediment, and SPM of the Yangtze River, which range in 0.04–11 ng/L, 0.33–69 ng/g, and 0.72–153 ng/L, respectively
The ΣPCBs level tends to be higher in water and SPM in the middle reaches than the downstream, but the reverse is true for sediment
Summary
As the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River flows through the most industrialized cities in China and provides critical ecological services for agriculture, industry, and transportation. As the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River supports the livelihood of > 400 million inhabitants and flows through a basin of about 1.8 × 106 km in size [1], covering regions with the highest level of urbanization and industrialization in eastern China that contribute to Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) include 209 congeners whose physicochemical properties and toxicity depend on the number and position of chlorine atoms in the molecule [5]. It is of great importance to understand the transport of PCBs in water, sediment, and suspended particulate matter (SPM) to evaluate their risks in drinking water source
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