PARENT SESSION

1D - Soil and Sediment Contamination
Poster Hall
8:30 AM - Tuesday, 29 April 2003
Chair: Van Noort, P.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Gerhardt, A.², Gerhardt, A.², ²

(TUP/22) Probing the fate and transfer of PAHs by multimedia monitoring.

Kim, Seung Kyu ¹, Lee, Dong Soo¹, Shin, Yong Seung¹, ¹ GSES, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, Korea

ABSTRACT- PAHs were monitored at two sites in Seoul for multimedia environment including air, soil, coniferous leaves (pinus rigida), water, and sediment. The study objectives were 1) integrated understanding of multimedia fate of PAHs and 2) evaluating multimedia fate models. This paper primarily addresses the first objective. The PAHs concentration gradients existed between the two sites in all media but water. While the gas phase composition was uniform across the two sites, the compositional patterns in the downtown particulates were richer in heavy PAHs as compared to those in both suburban particulates and leaves. If the vapor-particulates-leaves system had been in equilibrium, the PAH compositional patterns in the particulates and leaves would have been similar. The concentration gradient and dissimilarity in the patterns indicate that PAHs, primarily borne with downtown particulates, were in a process of redistribution to gas, suburban particulates, and leaves. While the compositional patterns were similar in soil and air particulates, those in SS were different in that lighter PAHs were predominant. PAHs in SS might originate from those dissolved in water, indicating that the main pathway of PAHs to SS is deposition to water from air particulates/vapor-dissolution into water-sorption onto SS, rather than deposition to soil-runoff to water. In sediment, fractions of heavier PAHs increased as compared to SS. This might be accounted for by longer residence time of sediment and possibly near equilibrium conditions between pore water and sediment particles. Implication to modelling is, among multimedia distribution pathways of PAHs from air, runoff to water appeared insignificant and assumption of fluid-solids equilibria is not likely in field conditions.

Key words: multimedia, PAHs, compositional pattern, non-equilibrium