Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)

A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Emerging Contaminants".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 1248

Special Issue Editors

Department of Environmental Science, Peking University, Beijing, China
Interests: POPs; PAHs; heavy metal; pesticides; species sensitive distribution (SSD) model; multimedia fugacity model; bioaccumulation; trophic transfer; ecological risk assessment; ecological indicator
Man-Technology-Environment (MTM) Research Centre, School of Science and Technology, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Interests: effect-based tools; effect-directed analysis; bioassays; polycyclic aromatic compounds; microplastics; contaminants of emerging concern; POPs; EDC; soil contamination

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are globally concerned organic pollutants composed of two or more benzene rings connected in a linear, angular or clustered manner, with more than 10000 monomers. PAHs are released into the environment from both natural and anthropogenic sources. The incomplete combustion of organic matter from human activities, such as the combustion of coal, firewood, and other biomass, as well as exhaust emissions from diesel and gasoline vehicles, can lead to the production of PAHs. Natural activities, such as forest fires, grassland fires and volcanic eruptions, also produce PAHs. Due to their ubiquitous distribution, environmental persistence, long-distance transportation capacity and toxic effects on human health and ecosystems, the sources, distribution, migration, fate, toxicity and pollution control countermeasures have received extensive attention in recent decades. We invite investigators to contribute original research articles or review articles that will stimulate the continuing efforts to understand the environmental behaviors, processes, effects and risks of PAHs. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • Emission factors and inventory;
  • Monitoring and analytical methods;
  • Distributions in multimedia;
  • Source apportionment;
  • Transfer and transformation process;
  • Toxicity to organisms;
  • Ecological risk assessment;
  • Human health risk assessment;
  • Fate and effect modeling;
  • Remediation technology for PAH-contaminated water and soil;
  • Pollution control and emission reduction countermeasures.

Prof. Dr. Fuliu Xu
Prof. Dr. Magnus Engwall
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • emission factors and inventory
  • monitoring and analytical methods
  • source apportionment
  • toxicity
  • risk assessment
  • modeling
  • remediation and control

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 4099 KiB  
Article
Development of Phase and Seasonally Dependent Land-Use Regression Models to Predict Atmospheric PAH Levels
by Ayibota Tuerxunbieke, Xiangyu Xu, Wen Pei, Ling Qi, Ning Qin and Xiaoli Duan
Toxics 2023, 11(4), 316; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics11040316 - 28 Mar 2023
Viewed by 936
Abstract
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an important class of pollutants in China. The land use regression (LUR) model has been used to predict the selected PAH concentrations and screen the key influencing factors. However, most previous studies have focused on particle-associated PAHs, and [...] Read more.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an important class of pollutants in China. The land use regression (LUR) model has been used to predict the selected PAH concentrations and screen the key influencing factors. However, most previous studies have focused on particle-associated PAHs, and research on gaseous PAHs was limited. This study measured representative PAHs in both gaseous phases and particle-associated during the windy, non-heating and heating seasons from 25 sampling sites in different areas of Taiyuan City. We established separate prediction models of 15 PAHs. Acenaphthene (Ace), Fluorene (Flo), and benzo [g,h,i] perylene (BghiP) were selected to analyze the relationship between PAH concentration and influencing factors. The stability and accuracy of the LUR models were quantitatively evaluated using leave-one-out cross-validation. We found that Ace and Flo models show good performance in the gaseous phase (Ace: adj. R2 = 0.14–0.82; Flo: adj. R2 = 0.21–0.85), and the model performance of BghiP is better in the particle phase (adj. R2 = 0.20–0.42). Additionally, better model performance was observed in the heating season (adj R2 = 0.68–0.83) than in the non-heating (adj R2 = 0.23–0.76) and windy seasons (adj R2 = 0.37–0.59). Those gaseous PAHs were highly affected by traffic emissions, elevation, and latitude, whereas BghiP was affected by point sources. This study reveals the strong seasonal and phase dependence of PAH concentrations. Building separate LUR models in different phases and seasons improves the prediction accuracy of PAHs. Full article
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