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MOBILIZATION OF PAHS AND PCBS FROM IN-PLACE CONTAMINATED MARINE SEDIMENTS DURING SIMULATED RESUSPENSION EVENTS
Citation:
Latimer, J S., W Davis, AND D J. Keith. MOBILIZATION OF PAHS AND PCBS FROM IN-PLACE CONTAMINATED MARINE SEDIMENTS DURING SIMULATED RESUSPENSION EVENTS. ESTUARINE, COASTAL AND SHELF SCIENCE 49:577-595, (2000).
Description:
A particle entrainment simulator was used to experimentally produce representative estuarine resuspension conditions to investigate the resulting transport of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to the overlying water column. Contaminants were evaluated in bulk sediments, size fractionated sediments, resuspended particulate material and in some cases, dissolved phases during the experiments. The two types of sediments used in the experiments, dredged material and bedded estuarine sediment, represented gradients in contaminant loadings and sediment textural characteristics. For the bedded sediment, resuspension tended to winnow the sediments of finer particles. However, in the case of the more highly contaminated dredge material, non-selective resuspension was most common. Resuspension resulted in up to orders of magnitude higher particle-bound organic contaminant concentrations in the overlying water column. Dissolved phase PAH changes during resuspension were variable and at most, increased by a factor of three. The sifting process resulted in the partitioning of fine and course particle contaminant loading. For bedded sediments, accurate predictions of PAH and PCB loadings on resuspended particles were made using the mass of resuspended particles of different sizes and the concentrations of contaminants in the particle pools of the bulk sediment. However, due possibly to contributions from other unmeasured particles (e.g. colloids), predictions were not possible for the dredge material. Thus, knowledge of the redistribution and fate of colloids may be important. The partitioning of PAHs between the dissolved and particulate phases during resuspension events was predicted to within a factor of two from the amount of organic carbon in each of the resuspended samples. These experiments show that contaminant transport is a function of the chemistry and textural characteristics of the bulk sediment and the winnowing action during resuspension events. Existing relationships of resuspension and settling velocity are probably useful in predicting chemical redistribution.