Environmental hazard assessment by the Ecoscore system to discriminate PAH-polluted soils

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 25; no. 27; pp. 26747 - 26756
• Main Authors: Lors, Christine, Ponge, Jean-François, Damidot, Denis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.09.2018; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Animals; Aquatic Pollution; Arthropods - drug effects; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Biodiversity and Ecology; Biological Assay; Chlorophyceae - drug effects; Coke; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Engineering; Environmental Health; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Environmental Sciences; Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons - analysis; Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons - toxicity; Protection and Restoration of the Environment; Soil Pollutants - analysis; Soil Pollutants - toxicity; Toxicity Tests; Vibrio - drug effects; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Ecotoxicity; PAHs; Liquid bioassays; Contaminated soils; Solid bioassays; Bioavailability; Ecoscores
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-9906-4

A bioassay battery-integrated index was applied to different soils sampled from a former coke factory, with the aim to evaluate the discriminating capacity of the Ecoscore system (ES) to assess the environmental hazard of PAH-polluted soils. Two soils from a former coke factory, polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), were evaluated for their ecotoxicity to terrestrial and aquatic organisms and their genotoxicity. These soils have been already presented in a previous paper but data have been reanalyzed for the present article in an endeavor to standardize the ES. One soil was sampled in the untreated site and the second underwent a windrow treatment. While these soils had a similar total concentrations of US-EPA 16PAHs (around 3000 mg kg −1 ), different ecoscores were obtained when subjected to a set of solid- and liquid-phase bioassays measuring acute, chronic, and genotoxic effects. The total PAH content of the soil is not a pertinent parameter to assess soil pollution hazards contrary to the ES. ES is a robust method to classify soils according to their toxicity level. Four levels of toxicity have been defined: no (ecoscore = 0), weak (0 < ecoscore ≤33), moderate (33 < ecoscore ≤67), and strong toxicity (67 < ecoscore ≤ 100). The combination of chemical and toxicological data highlights the relationship between three-ring PAHs and acute ecotoxicity. Conversely, chronic effects of water extracts on algal growth could be explained by high molecular weight PAHs, such as five- and six-ring PAHs.