Abstract
The aim of the study was to define the relationship between the concentration of PAHs in sewage sludge at a particular location and their amount in various plant materials growing on it. The credibility of the results is enhanced by the fact that sewage sludge from two separate sewage-treatment plants were selected for their influence on the content of PAHs in three plant species growing on them. The investigations were carried out for a period of three years. The results demonstrated unequivocally that the uptake of PAHs by a plant depended on polyaromatic hydrocarbon concentration in the sewage sludge. The correlation between accumulation coefficient of PAH in a plant and the content of the same PAH in the sewage sludge had for three-, four- and five-ring hydrocarbons an exponential character and for six-ring hydrocarbons was of a linear character. The accumulation coefficients calculated for three-ring aromatics were several times higher than for four-ring PAHs; further the coefficient values calculated for five-ring PAHs were several times lower than for four-ring hydrocarbons. Finally, the accumulation coefficient values of six-ring PAHs were the lowest in the series of studied polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
Highlights
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are environmental contaminants existing in nature as a complex mixture
It is worth noting that for each plant species the phenanthrene content was higher in Location 2 (L2), it occurred in lower amounts in the sewage sludge
The second most abundant PAH in the plants growing in both locations was fluoranthene (0.1073 mmol/kg in Phragmites communis collected from Location 1 (L1) to 0.1736 mmol/kg in Bidens tripartita, collected in L2)
Summary
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are environmental contaminants existing in nature as a complex mixture They may originate from natural sources, as non-anthropogenic burning of biomass, high temperature thermolysis of organic matter and diagenesis of sedimentary materials. The most studied and most known compound of the group is benzo[a]pyrene [9] Numerous data illustrate the distribution of concentration of PAHs in the atmosphere in areas of smoke emission and in the vicinity of the large urban centers [10,11,12]. Because of their mutagenic and/or carcinogenic properties PAHs are a risk to human health
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