Residues of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in aquatic environment and risk assessment along Shaying River, China

Residues of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in aquatic environment and risk assessment along Shaying River, China

Bai, Ying (Nanjing University)
Ruan, Xiaohong (Nanjing University)
van der Hoek, J.P. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering; Waternet)

2018

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) are pesticides with global scale ubiquity, persistence and bioaccumulation, which leave long-term residuals in the water body. OCPs’ high toxicity poses significant threats to human health and aquatic biodiversity, making assessment of OCPs’ impact on aquatic ecology and human health urgently necessary. In this research, the presence of 16 OCPs in surface water and groundwater along Shaying River, China, as well as OCPs concentration correlations, was investigated at 24 selected sampling sites. At the same time, the ecological risk and human carcinogenic risk were also analyzed by risk quotient method and USEPA’s Risk Assessment Guidance, respectively. Results showed that the total concentration of OCPs ranged from 21.0 to 61.4 ng L−1 in groundwater, and 12.3–77.5 ng L−1 in surface water. Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCHs) and heptachlor were the prominent contaminants in groundwater, which indicated their use in the recent past and confirmed their persistence. The α-HCH/γ-HCH ratios in groundwater confirmed that γ-HCH (lindane) was used as main substitute of technical HCH in the study area. The correlation analysis illustrated that δ-HCH and γ-HCH played a dominant role in HCHs residue. Heptachlor and α-HCH, as well as endosulfan and heptachlor epoxide, had a strongly significant positive correlation, suggesting an associated usage of the two pair OCPs. An extremely high ecological risk for aquatic organism was observed for γ-HCH, heptachlor and dieldrin, while the carcinogenic risks posed by the selected OCPs in surface water and groundwater were all acceptable.

Organochlorine pesticides
Surface water and groundwater
Risk assessment

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:75b9ed24-b58d-4ec6-b25e-b386965e43a3

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-018-0117-9

2018-11-10

0269-4042

Environmental Geochemistry and Health: official journal of the Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 40 (6)

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

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© 2018 Ying Bai, Xiaohong Ruan, J.P. van der Hoek