Suspended particulate matter (SPM)-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in lakes and reservoirs across a large geographical scale

Yong He; Kai Song; Chen Yang; Yilong Li; Wei He; Fuliu Xu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142863

Suspended particulate matter (SPM)-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in lakes and reservoirs across a large geographical scale

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Jan 15:752:142863. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142863. Epub 2020 Oct 9.

Authors

Yong He¹, Kai Song², Chen Yang¹, Yilong Li¹, Wei He¹, Fuliu Xu³

Affiliations

¹ MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
³ MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. Electronic address: xufl@urban.pku.edu.cn.

PMID: 33207515
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142863

Abstract

Suspended particulate matter (SPM) plays a key role in the environmental fate of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in lake environment. However, less is known about the occurrence, compositions and sources of SPM-bound PAHs as well as the correlations between SPM-bound PAHs and different suspended particulate organic matter (SPOM) on large geographical scale. In this study, we focused on the SPM-bound PAHs in 46 lakes and reservoirs across China to fill this gap. Our results showed that the concentrations of Σ₂₀ PAHs ranged from 334 to 38427 ng·g^-1 with a geometric mean (GM) of 3915 ng·g^-1. The occurrence of SPM-bound PAHs in this study was at a moderate level with large variations, which was associated with location and water depth according to linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Phenanthrene (Phe) was investigated as the overwhelming species with a GM of 1777 ng·g^-1, and was followed by fluoranthene (Fla), fluorene (Flu) and pyrene (Pyr) with GMs of 499 ng·g^-1, 276 ng·g^-1 and 184 ng·g^-1, respectively. The profiles of SPM-bound PAHs were primarily dominated by low-ring PAHs ranging from 56.0% to 97.1% (85.5% ± 7.7%, mean ± standard deviation). Four diagnostic ratios were applied for preliminary diagnoses, but inconsistent results were obtained in most samples. Ridge regression was applied to ascertain the potential influences of different SPOM on SPM-bound PAHs. The results revealed that the presence of SPM-bound PAHs was not only influenced by anthropogenic emissions, but also associated with biogenic organic matter. Our results provided a higher explanation than those just preliminarily estimated by total organic carbon (TOC). Nevertheless, there still exist over 50% of variance unexplained for most PAHs, and further study could focus more on the information of SPOM structures and potential local effects.

Keywords: Compositions; Lake environment; Occurrence; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs); Sources; Suspended particulate organic matter (SPOM).