Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
Volume 24, Issue 14, Pages 12860-12870Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-8810-2
Keywords
Soil pollution; Persistent organic pollutants; Exposure assessment; Stockholm protocol; Country in transition; GC-MS; Soxhlet extraction
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Funding
- Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
- Cuban institutions
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Cuba is a country in transition with a considerable potential for economic growth. Soils are recipients and integrators of chemical pollution, a frequent negative side effect of increasing industrial activities. Therefore, we established a soil monitoring network to monitor polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soils of Mayabeque, a Cuban province southeast of Havana. Concentrations of the sum of the 16 US EPA PAHs and of the seven IRMM PCBs in soils from 39 locations ranged from 20 to 106 mu g kg(-1) and from 1.1 to 7.6 mu g kg(-1), respectively. While such concentrations can be considered as low overall, they were in several cases correlated with the distance of sampling sites to presumed major emission sources, with some of the concomitantly investigated source diagnostic PAH ratios, and with black carbon content. The presented data adds to the limited information on soil pollution in the Caribbean region and serves as a reference time point before the onset of a possible further industrial development in Cuba. It also forms the basis to set up and adapt national environmental standards.
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