Rates and Routes of Transport of PCBs in the Environment

Abstract

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are one member of a class of chlorinated organic compounds which give rise to concern, because of their wide dispersal and persistence in the environment and tendency to accumulate in food chains, with possible adverse effects on animals at the top of the food webs, including man. In the past, attention has been concentrated on chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, such as DDT, dieldrin, heptachlor and HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane). More recently attention has been focused on PCBs and on chlorinated dibenzodioxins. Likely candidates for future attention are hexachlorobenzene, chlorinated dibenzofurans, and chlorinated phenols. In the past, such compounds have generally been studied individually. As the number of compounds giving rise to concern increases, there is an urgent need to establish uniform monitoring schemes and generalized models describing environmental transport and bioaccumulation which will be applicable to all compounds with these properties. Models such as the global monitoring scheme outlined by the SCEP study (1), and the global transport model outlined recently by Woodwell et al. (2), are needed in order to help identify sources of environmental contamination, to establish acceptable levels of discharge, and to estimate the effectiveness of different control strategies. This paper summarizes the fragmentary knowledge available about production, uses, and losses of PCBs, and attempts to define the major routes of transport and reservoirs of PCBs in the environ-