TP6 Effects of PAHs: Predicting Field Effects from Lab Studies
Room 18A/B, Level 4
2:10 PM - 5:30 PM, Tuesday, 11 November 2003
Chair: Hellou, Jocelyne ,
(291) Chemical profile of crude oils in support of toxicity studies.
Akhtar, P1, Wolinetz, M1, Brown, S R1, 1 Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT- Several studies have shown that acute and chronic exposure of fish to oil spills can cause toxic effects at all life stages. Most (80%) PAH in oils are alkylated PAH compounds, and a specialized analysis methods must be developed to determine the alkylPAH fingerprint of oils and oil fractions. This information will be useful in oil spill emergencies, in preventing exposure of fish populations to the most toxic of oils at critical points in their life cycle, when deciding to use various control, clean-up and remediation options. NP-HPLC was used to fractionate MESA crude and ANS crude oil samples to provide solutions containing aromatics of the same PAH type in the same fraction regardless of number of alkylcarbons. Subsequent RP-HPLC fractionation was used to isolate the individual alkyl groups in a faction. Recent work on alkylphenanthrene compounds demonstrates that this class of PAH, in contrast to unsubstituted phenanthrene, causes embryo-larval toxicity. We focused on characterizing alkylphenantres fraction of crude oil for their bioavailability. With HPLC a linear correlation between capacity factor and LogP values was developed. It was also found that a better linear correlation exists between capacity factor and alkyl carbon numbers. We calculated the LogP values and number of alkyl carbons for alkylphenanthrenes in Mesa crude and ANS crude oils. LogP values for alkylphenanthrens in Mesa ranged from 4.87±0.37 to 5.77± 0.39 and corresponding number of alkyl carbons are 1 to 3. Alkyl-PAH fingerprint along with LogP values of components will enable us to predict ecological risk of oil spills in aquatic environments.
Key words: fingerprint, alkylPAH, crude oil , HPLC