Soil contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is an increasing problem in many countries, including China. An extensive and systematic survey has been undertaken to evaluate the contamination with PAHs of urban soils in Beijing, China. Soil samples were collected from campuses of universities, schools and kindergartens, public squares, fallow land and roadsides, and were analy...

We first estimated the content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the brain, liver, bladder, roe, and muscle of four species of edible freshwater fish from the Beijing market. The distribution characteristics of PAHs in these tissues and organs were analyzed to determine their health risks to humans. The results showed that the residual levels of wet weight and lipid-normalized weigh...

A comparison was made between the dissipation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil freshly spiked with pure PAHs, soil spiked with a coal tar mixture and a contaminated soil from a former coking works where the PAHs had been present for more than a century. The potential of five selected plant species for phytoremediation was investigated. The levels of all 7 PAHs in chemically am...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations and their risks in surface sediments (n = 35) collected from coastal and estuarine areas of the northern Bohai and Yellow Seas, China, were investigated in 2008. Total concentrations of PAHs ranged from 52.3 to 1,870.6 ng/g dry weight. The greatest concentrations were observed in the Dou River of Tangshan where waste water from small factorie...

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) constitute a family of over one hundred compounds and can generally be found in complex mixtures. PAHs metabolites cause DNA damage which can lead to the development of carcinogenesis. Toxicity assessment of PAH complex mixtures is currently expressed in terms of toxic equivalents, based on Toxicity Equivalent Factors (TEFs). However, the definition of ne...

PM2.5 (Particulate Matter 2.5) samples were collected at Mount Heng and analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). During sampling, a sandstorm from northern China struck Mount Heng and resulted in a mean PM2.5 concentration of 150.61 μg/m3, which greatly exceeded the concentration measured under normal conditions (no sandstorm: 58.50 μg/m3). The average mass of PAHs in PM2.5 was 30....

Farmland soil and leafy vegetables accumulate more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in suburban sites. In this study, 13 sampling areas were selected from vegetable fields in the outskirts of Xi'an, the largest city in northwestern China. The similarity of PAH composition in soil and vegetation was investigated through principal components analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA), rather t...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous organic pollutants in urban environments and are considered as the priority pollutants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The objective of this study was to determine the depth-wise distribution (0–15, 15–30, and 30–45 cm) of 16 PAHs compounds in four urban soils of different land uses (residential, public parks, public buildings,...

The mid-IR spectra of six large, irregular PAHs with formulae (C84H24 – C120H36) have been computed using Density Functional Theory (DFT). Trends in the dominant band positions and intensities are compared to those of large, compact PAHs as a function of geometry, size and charge. Irregular edge moieties that are common in terrestrial PAHs, such as bay regions and rings with quartet hydrogens, ...