Atmospheric distribution of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, dibenzofurans and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls around a steel plant Area, Northeast China Yingming Li a , Pu Wang a , Lei Ding a , Xiaomin Li a , Thanh Wang a , Qinghua Zhang a, * , Hongbiao Yang b , Guibin Jiang a , Fusheng Wei c a State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 2871, Beijing 100085, China b Anshan Environmental Monitoring Center, Anshan 114104, China c China National Environmental Monitoring Center, Beijing 100029, China article info Article history: Received 3 November 2009 Received in revised form 26 January 2010 Accepted 27 January 2010 Available online 21 February 2010 Keywords: PCDD/Fs Dioxin-like PCBs Ambient air Steel plant Northeast China abstract Air monitoring of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) was carried out in June 2008 and January 2009 to inves- tigate the concentrations, profiles and estimating potential inhalation risks to the local residents around a steel plant area in northeast China. The air concentrations and WHO-TEQs of PCDD/Fs ranged 94– 4944 fg m 3 (average 1352 fg m 3 ) and 3–247 fg m 3 (average 81 fg m 3 ), respectively. The WHO-TEQ concentrations of dioxin-like PCBs ranged 1–18 fg m 3 (average 5 fg m 3 ), contributing to 3.6–26% of the total TEQ. Higher PCDD/F concentrations were observed in the winter, whereas higher dioxin-like PCB concentrations were found in the summer. The seasonal trend can be related to the significant cor- relation between the concentrations of dioxins and the reciprocal of temperature (positive for PCDD/Fs, P < 0.01; negative for dioxin-like PCBs, P = 0.05). A significant positive correlation (P < 0.0001) was found between the concentration of total suspended particulate (TSP) and PCDD/F concentrations, but not for PCB congeners. Although the steel plant sites showed higher dioxin levels than the residential and back- ground areas, the PCDD/F levels in the atmosphere of the steel plant area was at a relatively low level. The results from this study provides further aid in evaluating the impact of steel plants as PCDD/Fs emission sources to the ambient air in China. Crown Copyright Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Chinese government has developed the National Imple- mentation Plan (NIP) on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in or- der to implement the Stockholm Convention that was ratified by Chinese government in 2004. The NIP project includes four catego- ries of POPs: pesticides, stockpiles, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and unintentionally produced POPs (Zhu et al., 2008). The last inventory of POPs, which refers to polychlorinated dibenzo- p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs), covers a large variety of emission sources associated with anthropogenic activities (UNEP, 2001). Municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) and production of iron and steel (e.g. iron ore sintering) are both considered as signif- icant PCDD/F sources emitted to the environment (Anderson and Fisher, 2002; Quaß et al., 2004; Aries et al., 2006). Quaß et al. (2000) reported that the largest annual PCDD/Fs emission at the European scale was assessed to be released from MSWI, closely fol- lowed by emissions from iron ore sintering. In China, however, PCDD/F emissions from non-ferrous production (2.6–3389.8 g TEQ) were estimated to be much higher than that from MSWI (66.9 g TEQ if using 10% incineration ratio) due to the large quan- tity of iron and steel production (1.97  10 8 ty 1 in 2002) and the low incineration ratio of municipal waste (only 4.90% until 2003) (Zhu et al., 2008). Therefore, more attention should be paid to the PCDD/Fs emissions from steel plants and their potential im- pact to the ambient environment in China. Recent studies on PCDD/Fs in China have been focused on the atmospheric PCDD/F concentrations in Chinese urban areas to evaluate the impact of PCDD/Fs to the local residents. For example, Yu et al. (2006), Li et al. (2008a,b) have reported the concentrations of PCDD/Fs in the ambient atmosphere of Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai city, respectively. Their results demonstrated that the levels were comparable or slightly higher than those of many other urban cities around the world. Xu et al. (2009) reported the air 0045-6535/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2010.01.061 * Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 10 62849818. E-mail address: qhzhang@rcees.ac.cn (Q. Zhang). Chemosphere 79 (2010) 253–258 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemosphere journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere