DDT, Chlordane, and Hexachlorobenzene in the Air of the Pearl River Delta Revisited: A Tale of Source, History, and Monsoon

Lele Tian, Jing Li, Shizhen Zhao*, Jiao Tang, Jun Li, Hai Guo, Xin Liu, Guangcai Zhong, Yue Xu, Tian Lin, Xiaopu Lyv, Duohong Chen, Kechang Li, Jin Shen, Gan Zhang*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    29 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Although organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) have been banned for more than three decades, their concentrations have only decreased gradually. This may be largely attributable to their environmental persistence, illegal application, and exemption usage. This study assessed the historic and current regional context for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), chlordane, and hexachlorobenzene (HCB), which were added to the Stockholm Convention in 2001. An air sampling campaign was carried out in 2018 in nine cities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), where the historical OCP application was the most intensive in China. Different seasonalities were observed: DDT exhibited higher concentrations in summer than in winter; chlordane showed less seasonal variation, whereas HCB was higher in winter. The unique coupling of summer monsoon with DDT-infused paint usage, winter monsoon with HCB-combustion emission, and local chlordane emission jointly presents a dynamic picture of these OCPs in the PRD air. We used the BETR Global model to back-calculate annual local emissions, which accounted for insignificant contributions to the nationally documented production (
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)9740–9749
    Number of pages10
    JournalEnvironmental Science and Technology
    Volume55
    Issue number14
    Early online date2 Jul 2021
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 20 Jul 2021

    User-Defined Keywords

    • organochlorine pesticides
    • Pearl River Delta
    • back-calculated emission
    • multimedia fate model

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