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PCBS IN LAKE HARTWELL, SC, HEADWATERS OF THE SAVANNAH RIVER BASIN
Citation:
Lee, C. M., U. Pakdeesusuk, D. L. Freedman, J. T. Coates, A W. Garrison, AND A. W. Elzerman. PCBS IN LAKE HARTWELL, SC, HEADWATERS OF THE SAVANNAH RIVER BASIN. Presented at 54th Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Charleston, SC, November 13-16, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
Extend existing model technologies to accommodate the full range of transport, fate and food chain contamination pathways, and their biogeographical variants, present in agricultural landscapes and watersheds. Assemble the range of datasets needed to execute risk assessments with appropriate geographic specificity in support of pesticide safety evaluations. Develop software integration technologies, user interfaces, and reporting capabilities for direct application to the EPA risk assessment paradigm in a statistical and probabilistic decision framework.
Description:
Contamination due to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBS) was discovered in the mid-1970s in the fish and sediments of Lake Hartwell, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir on the border of South Carolina and Georgia that was formed from the Seneca and Tugaloo Rivers. Research by universities, state agencies, and consulting firms has revealed much about the distribution and behavior of PCBs in this reservoir system. The latest findings include the presence of on-going reductive dechlorination and the role of enantioselective transformations of PCBs by microorganisms eluted from the sediments of Lake Hartwell. Field data that compares 1987 cores with 1998 cores as well as results from microcosms support continuing removal of chlorine at specific locations and depths. Chiral analyses provide insight into microbial reductive dechlorination and may serve as a surrogate parameter for biodegradation. These findings will be discussed in the historical context of the long-term work.