Risk Posed by Anthropogenically Driven Toxic Pollutants in Abu Qir Bay, East Alexandria, Egypt

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In an attempt to evaluate the environmental quality of Abu Qir Bay, an important highly productive area in Alexandria, Egypt, an environmental risk assessment was performed; including a screening level ecological risk assessment (SLERA) and a human health risk assessment (HHRA). The output of the SLERA revealed that Hg, Zn, Cd, DDD, DDTs, dieldrin, chlordane, lindane, heptachlor (all had PEC HQ > 1), Pb, p,p´-DDE and p,p´-DDT (TEC HQ > 1 > PEC HQ) could be considered as contaminants of potential concern and that adverse ecological effects are expected to occur for the benthic species when exposed to the bay sediments. At the same time, endosulfane, chlorpyrifos, heptachlor epoxides, which were evaluated based on the available screening benchmark concentration could also be regarded as contaminants of potential concern and could be included in a more detailed risk assessment with site specific studies. In the mussels, As, Cd, Cu, Hg and Zn concentrations were higher than the toxicity reference values aiming at the protection of 95 % of the benthic species and thus could possibly be a sign of the probability of occurrence of effects. On the other hand, tissue concentrations of all the investigated pollutants in this risk assessment were lower than all toxicity data available for Mytilus edulis and Mytilus galloprovincialis. In the HHRA, it was concluded that except for As, no adverse threshold or nonthreshold health effects are expected to occur from the ingestion of both mussel species at the available ingestion rate and thus both species can be ingested safely. In the case of As, the calculated cancer risk in Mactra corallina was between the 10-6 and 10-4 cancer level set by the USEPA as an acceptable level. Compared to other items of the normal Egyptian diet, carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic health effects could be more expected from the ingestion of other types of food such as fish, bread, meat and vegetables.