Concentrations, distribution and risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments from seven major river basins in China over the past 20 years

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111717

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume 280, 15 February 2021, 111717

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111717 Get rights and content

Highlights

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A national picture of PAHs in river sediments of China was provided.
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PAH pollution in river sediments in north China is heavier than that in the south.
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No significant declines in PAH levels in river sediments nationwide were found.
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The risks from PAHs in sediments seem to decline in the past 20 years.

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in river sediments in China have been extensively investigated. However, most previous studies only reported information about specific locations. As a result, the distribution and changes of these chemicals in sediments nationwide remain unknown. Based on published data during 1997–2020, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis to understand the concentration, risk and the spatiotemporal variation of PAHs in river sediments from the seven major river systems in China. The report provides a national picture of PAHs in river sediments of China. Among the seven river systems, higher concentrations of sediment PAHs are found in the basins of Liaohe River and Haihe River. In the study sediments, high-molecular-mass (4–6-ring) PAHs were predominated, reflecting the widespread combustion of coal and fossil fuels across China. In addition, PAH source assessment also suggests that raw coal and crude oil are important contributors to PAH concentrations in the rivers in northeastern China. Over the past 20 years, there is no downward trend in the concentrations of Σ₁₆PAHs in sediments in the seven river basins; but the contribution of high-temperature combustion to the pollution has declined. In addition, our calculated risks from sediment PAHs seem to decline between 1997–2006 and 2007–2017 periods, although the differences were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Of note, the data collection and the risk assessment methods used in this preliminary survey may result in some uncertainty. Our results suggest that the PAHs in river sediments in China still need to be paid attention to due to the complexity of their sources and harms to aquatic organisms.

Section snippets

Credit author statement

Minna Zhang: Resources, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Software, Writing – original draft. Zhenwu Tang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. Hongmin Yin: Investigation. Tong Meng: Investigation.

Data collection

Databases including Scopus, Web of Science (WOS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were used to search the literature using the key words “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons” (or PAHs) combined with “sediment” and/or “river”. Then the data on the concentrations of PAHs were collected from the related full text databases, both in English and Chinese. In this study, 98 studies on PAH contaminations in river sediments in different basins of China published between 1997 and 2020,

Concentration and spatial distribution

Descriptive statistics for total concentrations of the 16 PAHs (Σ₁₆PAHs) in river sediment samples from the seven basins across China are shown in Table 1. All 16 individual PAHs have left skewed concentration distributions. Concentrations of Σ₁₆PAHs range from 5.40 to 1,943,000 ng/g (dry mass (dm)), with a median of 1,057 ng/g dm. Baumard et al. (1998) classified the concentrations (ng/g dm) of sediment PAHs as follows: <1,000, low to moderate contamination; 1000–5000, high contamination; >

Conclusions

This study investigates the distribution and change of PAH concentrations in sediment samples from the seven major basins in China between 1997 and 2017 based on data reported in the published literature. Our results indicate that 16 PAHs are prevalent in the sediments and concentrations observed are generally higher relative to those of other countries. The combustion of fossil fuel and biomass is considered the dominant contributor to PAH pollution at the national scale. Geographically, the

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2018YFC1900104) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41877467 and 41571445). We thank Kyle Horner, PhD, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China, for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

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Research articleConcentrations, distribution and risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments from seven major river basins in China over the past 20 years

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Credit author statement

Data collection

Concentration and spatial distribution

Conclusions

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgments

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Research article
Concentrations, distribution and risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments from seven major river basins in China over the past 20 years