Gaobeidian Lake, located in Beijing, China, serves as a recipient lake for efluents from a large municipal sewage treatment plant （MSTP）. In order to evaluate the effects of discharging MSTP efluent on the mercury contamination of the local aquatic ecosystem, sediment cores, water, plankton, fish, and turtle samples were collected from Gaobeidian Lake for mercury speciation analysis. High concentrations of total mercury （T-Hg） were detected in sediment cores （5.24–17.0 μg/g dry weight （dw）, average： 10.1 μg/g）. The ratio of methylmercury （MeHg） to T-Hg was less than 0.3% in sediments and ranged from 35% to 76% in biota samples. The highest level of T-Hg and MeHg were found in aquatic bryophyte and crucian carp （3673 and 437 ng/g dw, respectively）. The relative contents of MeHg were significantly correlated with trophic levels （R2 = 0.5506, p 0.001）, which confirmed that MeHg can be bio-transferred and biomagnified via food chain in this aquatic ecosystem.
Jianjie Fu, Yawei Wang, Qunfang Zhou, Guibin Jiang State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
As two kinds of emerging chemicals, the pollution of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and perfluoroocatane sulfonate (PFOS) has been becoming a global environmental problem. Also, research of the transport, transfer, bioaccumulation in organism, and toxicology of these two kinds of pollutant is a hotspot in environmental sciences now. In this paper, we summarize and critically review the status and progress of PBDEs and PFOS exposure to human beings. Further, data analyses based on statistical methods are done to study the characters of PBDEs and PCBs concentrations in different regions in the world.
