PARENT SESSION

3D - Exposure and effects of environmental contaminants in marine organisms
Hall 7
8:30 AM - 12:30 PM, Tuesday, 29 April 2003
Chair: Scholz, N.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Karbe, L.², ²

(TU7/4) Identification and quantification of "new" contaminants in the North Sea.

Weigel, Stefan¹, Hühnerfuss, Heinrich¹, ¹ Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, HH, Germany

ABSTRACT- Several rivers and streams are discharging their contaminant load from industrial, domestic, agricultural and diffuse sources into the North Sea. Consequently, a large variety of organic chemicals is present in North Sea waters. While a considerable knowledge on the presence and behaviour of organochlorine compounds such as lindane (-HCH) was gathered in recent decades, the investigation of further, often more hydrophilic compounds started in the 1990s. The aim of the presented study was to contribute further knowledge to an inventory of organic contaminants in the North Sea and to identify compounds of potential concern. This was achieved by the non-target screening of water samples from several coastal and off-shore locations in the North Sea. 20 L-water samples were filtered and extracted by means of a hypercrosslinked polystyrene-divinylbenzene sorbent and measured by GC/MS. Besides classical pollutants such as -, - and -HCH and PCBs further compounds were identified. These included pesticides and their transformation products (dichlobenil, DEET, simazine, atrazine, terbutylazine, desethylatrazine, propoxur, diuron, metolachlor), industrial chemicals (e.g., dichlorobenzenes, chloroanilines, dichloropyridines, nitrobenzenes, chloropropylethers, chloroalkyl-, alkyl- and aryl-phosphates, triphenylphosphine oxide-TPPO, N-ethyl toluidin, benzothiazoles) and pharmaceuticals (caffeine, carbamazepine, clofibric acid, propyphenazone). Selected substances were quantified. Concentrations were in the pg/L- to low ng/L-range.

Key words: solid-phase extraction, seawater, industrial chemicals, pesticides