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. 2022 Feb 15;56(4):2269-2278.
doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c04780. Epub 2022 Feb 2.

Hydroxylated Polychlorinated Biphenyls Are Emerging Legacy Pollutants in Contaminated Sediments

Panithi Saktrakulkla  1   2 , Xueshu Li  3 , Andres Martinez  2 , Hans-Joachim Lehmler  1   3 , Keri C Hornbuckle  1   2
Affiliations

Hydroxylated Polychlorinated Biphenyls Are Emerging Legacy Pollutants in Contaminated Sediments

Panithi Saktrakulkla et al. Environ Sci Technol. .

Erratum in

Abstract

We measured the concentrations of 837 hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyls (OH-PCBs, in 275 chromatographic peaks) and 209 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs, in 174 chromatographic peaks) in sediments from New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts, Altavista wastewater lagoon in Virginia, and the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal in Indiana, USA and in the original commercial PCB mixtures Aroclors 1016, 1242, 1248, and 1254. We used the correlation between homologues and the peak responses to quantify the full suite of OH-PCBs including those without authentic standards available. We found that OH-PCB levels are approximately 0.4% of the PCB levels in sediments and less than 0.0025% in Aroclors. The OH-PCB congener distributions of sediments are different from those of Aroclors and are different according to sites. We also identified a previously unknown compound, 4-OH-PCB52, which together with 4'-OH-PCB18 made up almost 30% of the OH-PCBs in New Bedford Harbor sediments but less than 1.2% in the Aroclors and 3.3% in any other sediments. This indicates site-specific environmental transformations of PCBs to OH-PCBs. We conclude that the majority of OH-PCBs in these sediments are generated in the environment. Our findings suggest that these toxic breakdown products of PCBs are prevalent in PCB-contaminated sediments and present an emerging concern for humans and ecosystems.

Keywords: Altavista; Aroclors; Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal; New Bedford Harbor; OH-PCBs; sediment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
GMs of log-transformed total OH-PCB and PCB concentrations (μg/g dry weight) of NBH, AWL, and IHSC sediments and Aroclors. The error bars indicate geometric standard deviation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Boxplot of log-transformed relative concentrations of OH-PCBs to PCBs (log([OH-PCBs]/[PCBs])) of NBH, AWL, and IHSC sediments and those of Aroclors. The whiskers indicate 1.5 times the interquartile range.
Figure 3
Figure 3
PCB congener profiles of NBH, AWL, and IHSC sediments and those of Aroclors. Y-axis is the concentration fraction of total OH-PCBs with each tick indicating 5%. On X-axis, PCB congeners are arranged by congener names.
Figure 4
Figure 4
OH-PCB congener profiles of NBH, AWL, and IHSC sediments, and those of Aroclors. Y-axis is the concentration fraction of total OH-PCBs with each tick indicating 10%. On X-axis, OH-PCB congeners are arranged by chlorination and the peak elution order (Supelco SPB-Octyl capillary column). The green bars indicate OH-PCBs identified with authentic standards, and black bars indicate OH-PCBs known only by the homologue (#Cl) and RRT. Under each title on the left side are the numbers of known (green) and unknown (black) OH-PCBs. Bars on the right side show the proportions of known (green) to the total OH-PCB concentrations with each tick indicating 25%.
Figure 5
Figure 5
General hydroxylation through CYP450 of PCB52. The scheme is modified from the study by Grimm et al. (2015).
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