Abstract
The intertidal zone—a transitional boundary between terrestrial and marine environments—has important ecological functions, and receives polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from human activities, but how and to what extent anthropogenic factors influence the distribution of PAHs in this important niche remain largely unknown. Here we measured the distribution of United States Environmental Protection Agency priority PAHs in samples of intertidal sediments from across more than 4,500 km of China’s coastline. The total PAH concentrations ranged from 2.3 to 1,031.7 ng g−1 sediment (dry weight) and all PAHs showed positive correlations with total organic carbon (TOC). TOC-normalized high-molecular-weight (HMW) PAH concentrations, but not TOC-normalized low-molecular-weight (LMW) PAHs, were positively correlated with TOC. Moreover, population size and economic development influenced TOC-normalized HMW PAH concentrations, whereas urbanization had a major influence on TOC-normalized LMW PAHs. Human activities also indirectly influenced TOC-normalized PAH concentrations by affecting TOC. In sum, our investigation provides continental-scale evidence that human activities have key and differential effects on the distribution and deposition of PAHs in intertidal sediments, and shows that pollution status and profile of PAHs can be used to index regional industrialization and urbanization status.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are summarized in the Supplementary Information, and any other data analysed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
References
Keith, L. & Telliard, W. Priority pollutants: I-a perspective view. Environ. Sci. Technol. 13, 416–423 (1979).
Ravindra, K., Sokhi, R. & Van Grieken, R. Atmospheric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: source attribution, emission factors and regulation. Atmos. Environ. 42, 2895–2921 (2008).
Lang, C., Tao, S., Liu, W. X., Zhang, Y. X. & Simonich, S. Atmospheric transport and outflow of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from China. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42, 5196–5201 (2008).
Han, D. M. & Currell, M. J. Persistent organic pollutants in China’s surface water systems. Sci. Total Environ. 580, 602–625 (2017).
Hamid, N. et al. A review on the abundance, distribution and eco-biological risks of PAHs in the key environmental matrices of South Asia. Rev. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 240, 1–30 (2017).
Balcioglu, E. B. Potential effects of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in marine foods on human health: a critical review. Toxin Rev. 35, 98–105 (2016).
Zhang, P. & Chen, Y. G. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons contamination in surface soil of China: a review. Sci. Total Environ. 605, 1011–1020 (2017).
Lunde, G. & Bjorseth, A. Polycyclic aromatic-hydrocarbons in long-range transported aerosols. Nature 268, 518–519 (1977).
Barbier, E. B. et al. The value of estuarine and coastal ecosystem services. Ecol. Monogr. 81, 169–193 (2011).
Wamsley, T. V., Cialone, M. A., Smith, J. M., Atkinson, J. H. & Rosati, J. D. The potential of wetlands in reducing storm surge. Ocean Eng. 37, 59–68 (2010).
Doney, S. C. The growing human footprint on coastal and open-ocean biogeochemistry. Science 328, 1512–1516 (2010).
Lotze, H. K. et al. Depletion, degradation, and recovery potential of estuaries and coastal seas. Science 312, 1806–1809 (2006).
Shen, H. Z. et al. Global atmospheric emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from 1960 to 2008 and future predictions. Environ. Sci. Technol. 47, 6415–6424 (2013).
Zhang, Y. X. & Tao, S. Seasonal variation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) emissions in China. Environ. Pollut. 156, 657–663 (2008).
Xu, S. S., Liu, W. X. & Tao, S. Emission of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in China. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40, 702–708 (2006).
Mai, B. X. et al. Distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the coastal region off Macao, China: assessment of input sources and transport pathways using compositional analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37, 4855–4863 (2003).
Liu, L. Y., Wang, J. Z., Wei, G. L., Guan, Y. F. & Zeng, E. Y. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in continental shelf sediment of China: implications for anthropogenic influences on coastal marine environment. Environ. Pollut. 167, 155–162 (2012).
Ya, M. L. et al. Seasonal variation of terrigenous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons along the marginal seas of China: input, phase partitioning, and ocean-current transport. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 9072–9079 (2017).
Li, X. F. et al. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and black carbon in intertidal sediments of China coastal zones: concentration, ecological risk, source and their relationship. Sci. Total Environ. 566, 1387–1397 (2016).
Keshavarzifard, M., Moore, F., Keshavarzi, B. & Sharifi, R. Distribution, source apportionment and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in intertidal sediment of Asaluyeh, Persian Gulf. Environ. Geochem. Health 40, 721–735 (2018).
Heywood, E. et al. Factors influencing the national distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls in British soils. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40, 7629–7635 (2006).
Syed, J. H. et al. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Chinese forest soils: profile composition, spatial variations and source apportionment. Sci. Rep. 7, 2692 (2017).
Liu, M. et al. Distribution and sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in intertidal flat surface sediments from the Yangtze estuary, China. Environ. Geol. 41, 90–95 (2001).
Maskaoui, K., Zhou, J. L., Hong, H. S. & Zhang, Z. L. Contamination by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the Jiulong River Estuary and Western Xiamen Sea, China. Environ. Pollut. 118, 109–122 (2002).
Tobiszewski, M. & Namiesnik, J. PAH diagnostic ratios for the identification of pollution emission sources. Environ. Pollut. 162, 110–119 (2012).
Yunker, M. B. et al. PAHs in the Fraser River basin: a critical appraisal of PAH ratios as indicators of PAH source and composition. Org. Geochem. 33, 489–515 (2002).
Zhang, X. L. et al. Source diagnostics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons based on species ratios: a multimedia approach. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39, 9109–9114 (2005).
Katsoyiannis, A., Sweetman, A. J. & Jones, K. C. PAH molecular diagnostic ratios applied to atmospheric sources: a critical evaluation using two decades of source inventory and air concentration data from the UK. Environ. Sci. Technol. 45, 8897–8906 (2011).
Larsen, R. K. & Baker, J. E. Source apportionment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the urban atmosphere: a comparison of three methods. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37, 1873–1881 (2003).
Kavouras, I. G. et al. Source apportionment of urban particulate aliphatic and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) using multivariate methods. Environ. Sci. Technol. 35, 2288–2294 (2001).
Chen, Y. J. et al. Emission factors for carbonaceous particles and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from residential coal combustion in China. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39, 1861–1867 (2005).
Dobbins, R. A., Fletcher, R. A., Benner, B. A. & Hoeft, S. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in flames, in diesel fuels, an in diesel emissions. Combust. Flame 144, 773–781 (2006).
Shi, Z. et al. Dual mechanisms regulate ecosystem stability under decade-long warming and hay harvest. Nat. Commun. 7, 11973 (2016).
Trivedi, P. et al. Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene–enzyme relationships. ISME J. 10, 2593–2604 (2016).
Grace, J. B. Structural Equation Modelling and Natural Systems (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Basic Special Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China (2014FY210600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41601525, 21677167 and 21976209), the Thousand Young Talents Program of China, Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2016DB07) and the Taishan Scholar Project Special Funding (ts20190962). We thank W. T. Shang, B. Hong and L. M. Liu for their help with data processing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
L.C., C.L. and D.L. designed the experiments. D.L. and D.W. collected the sediment samples and analysed sediment properties. C.L., M.L. and X.L. performed PAH analysis. M.L. collected anthropogenic and climatic parameters, analysed the data and wrote the original draft. G.Z. and G.J. provided experimental support and revision suggestions. All authors contributed extensively to conducting the experiments and revising the paper.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Methods, discussion, Tables 1–17, Figs. 1–7 and references.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lv, M., Luan, X., Liao, C. et al. Human impacts on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon distribution in Chinese intertidal zones. Nat Sustain 3, 878–884 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0565-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0565-y
This article is cited by
-
Disentangling drivers of mudflat intertidal DOM chemodiversity using ecological models
Nature Communications (2024)
-
PM2.5-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs): quantification and source prediction studies in the ambient air of automobile workshop using the molecular diagnostic ratio
Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment (2024)
-
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon: underpinning the contribution of specialist microbial species to contaminant mitigation in the soil
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (2024)
-
A novel biomass pyrogenic index and its application coupled with black carbon for improving polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon source identification
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (2023)
-
Distribution, sources, and risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Kaokaowusu river sediments near a coal industrial zone
Environmental Geochemistry and Health (2023)