Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), are widely distributed in the environment. Several studies have demonstrated that these pollutants will cause potential impacts such as carcinogenic and mutagenic for human health. In this study, four different types of sampling stations were chosen. Two of the sampling sites are located in Kaohsiung city, which is an industrialized city with densely population in southern Taiwan (KHU and KHC). The other sampling sites are in a rural coastal area (KT) and an offshore island (LY), respectively. We determined the concentrations of PCBs and PBDEs in the atmosphere to identify the spatial and temporal distributions of PCBs and PBDEs in southern Taiwan. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal components analysis (PCA) of congener-specific composition of PCBs and PBDEs were performed with the commercial products to investigate the relationship of regional signatures and possible pollution sources. Finally, back trajectory analysis was undertaken to gain a better understanding of long-distance transport contribution to the studied area.
The concentrations of £UPCBs in the ambient air ranged from 9.51 to 482 pg m-3, with an average concentration of 162¡Ó155 pg m-3. The mean PCB concentrations in gas and particle phase were 159¡Ó153 pg m-3 and 3.04¡Ó2.38 pg m-3, respectively. The concentrations of £UPBDEs in the ambient air ranged from 3.42 to 166 pg m-3, with an average concentration of 31.7¡Ó37.3 pg m-3. The average PBDE concentrations in gas and particle phase were 7.22¡Ó6.50 pg m-3 and 23.7¡Ó33.4 pg m-3, respectively. Comparison of the total PCB and PBDE concentrations from the four sampling sites showed that the total PCB and PBDE concentrations at the Kaohsiung urban site (KHU) and Kaohsiung coastal site (KHC) were higher than those at a rural coastal site (Kenting, KT) and an offshore island site (Lanyu, LY), suggesting that densely population and heavy industrial park may be the major contributor of PCBs and PBDEs .
Results from HCA, PCA and compositional patterns of PCBs indicate that offshore island site (Lanyu, LY) was different from KHU, KHC and KT. Lower chlorinated congeners (dichlorobiphenyls to hexachlorobiphenyls) were predominant in the gas phase. Since most of the lower molecular weight congeners were below the detection limit, the total PCB concentrations were found at much lower level in LY sampling sites. In addition, a significantly higher proportion of high-chlorinated congeners, was observed at LY, suggesting that there may be local pollution sources in this area. Results from HCA, PCA and compositional patterns of PBDEs indicate that the samples from February and October were dominated by BDE-209, while the samples from July were dominated by BDE-71, BDE-47 and BDE-99, suggesting that this might be due to the significantly low concentrations of suspended particles (PM10) in July. Since much higher temperature was observed in July, these lower brominated congeners may be released much easier from the sediment, water, and brominated-containing products due to smaller molecular size and higher vapor pressure. Moreover, debromination of the deca-BDEs had been observed in the environment. Several studies have shown that photolytic debromination of BDE-209 is possible pathway for the formation of lower brominated-BDEs.
TEQ was used to determine the level of pollution for environment and human health. In this study area, the TEQ ranged from 0.145 to 0.878 pg-TEQ m-3, with an average TEQ of 0.0004¡Ó0.0003 pg-TEQ m-3 in gas-phase of ambient air. PCB114 was observed to be the predominant congener in this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0723112-220248 |
| Date | 23 July 2012 |
| Creators | Huang, Xiu-Ying |
| Contributors | Shui-Jen Chen, Chin-Hsing Lai, Meng-Der Fang, Chon-Lin Lee |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0723112-220248 |
| Rights | user_define, Copyright information available at source archive |
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