Some of the chemistry behind differences in bioavailability of sediment-associated contaminants among different sediments

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:49594

Landrum, P F; Gossiaux, D; Harkey, G ^[1]; Kukkonen, J ^[2]

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1. Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab., Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
2. Univ. of Joensuu (Finland). Dept. of Biology

Understanding the differences in the bioavailability of sediment-associated contaminants to benthic organisms when exposed to different sediments remains a major problem for predicting sediment bioaccumulation factors. For non-polar organic compounds, the suggested approach to reducing the variability among sediment exposures is to normalize the concentrations in the sediment to the organic carbon content. However, carbon normalization does not always reduce the variation among exposures to different sediments. For instance, the variation in the bioavailability of hexachlorobiphenyl between some Great Lakes sediments and Florissant soil was a factor of ten after carbon normalization. The distribution of compounds among small, < 63 {mu}m dia., particles does not exhibit the same distribution as the organic carbon. Further, the contaminant distribution relative to organic carbon content differs among sediments and between contaminants of different compound classes, e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls. This results in variable bioavailability even for compounds of similar log K{sub ow} values within a sediment or for the same compound between sediments. The distributions of pyrene, tetrachlorobiphenyl, benzo[a]pyrene, hexachlorobiphenyl and organic carbon for sediments collected from a wide range of geographic locations will be described and related to bioavailability differences among sediments.

• OSTI ID: 49594
• Report Number(s): CONF-9410273--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
56 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
APPLIED STUDIES
BENZOPYRENE
BIOLOGICAL AVAILABILITY
CHLORINATED AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS
PYRENE
SEDIMENTS
WATER POLLUTION