Pollution assessment of the Biobío River (Chile): Prioritization of substances of concern under an ecotoxicological approach
Identifiers
Permanent link (URI): http://hdl.handle.net/10017/64716DOI: 10.1007/s00267-017-0824-5
PMID: 28110358
ISSN: 0364-152X
Date
2017Academic Departments
Universidad de Alcalá. Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida
Teaching unit
Unidad Docente Ecología
Funders
Universidad de Alcalá
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
Ministerio de Educación (Chile)
Bibliographic citation
Alonso, Á., Figueroa, R. and Castro-Díez, P. (2017) ‘Pollution Assessment of the Biobío River (Chile): Prioritization of Substances of Concern Under an Ecotoxicological Approach’, Environmental management (New York), 59(5), pp. 856–869. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-017-0824-5.
Keywords
Chile
Ecotoxicology
Pollution
Risk assessment
River
Water quality criteria
Description / Notes
14 p.
Project
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/UAH//CCG2013%2FEXP-054/ES/
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MINECO//CGL2015-65346-R/ES/Aspectos básicos y aplicados del impacto de plantas invasoras
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
Rights
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
The water demand for human activities is rapidly increasing in developing countries. Under these circumstances, preserving aquatic ecosystems should be a priority which requires the development of quality criteria. In this study we perform a preliminary prioritization of the risky substances based on reported ecotoxicological studies and guidelines for the Biobío watershed (Central Chile). Our specific aims are (1) reviewing the scientific information on the aquatic pollution of this watershed, (2) determining the presence and concentration of potential toxic substances in water, sediment and effluents, (3) searching for quality criteria developed by other countries for the selected substances and (4) prioritizing the most risky substances by means of deterministic ecotoxicological risk assessment. We found that paper and mill industries were the main sources of point pollution, while forestry and agriculture were mostly responsible for non-point pollution. The most risky organic substances in the water column were pentachlorophenol and heptachlor, while the most relevant inorganic ones were aluminum, copper, unionized ammonia and mercury. The most risky organic and inorganic substances in the sediment were phenanthrene and mercury, respectively. Our review highlights that an important effort has been done to monitor pollution in the Biobío watershed. However there are emerging pollutants and banned compounds-especially in sediments-that require to be monitored. We suggest that site-specific water quality criteria and sediment quality criteria should be developed for the Biobío watershed, considering the toxicity of mixtures of chemicals to endemic species, and the high natural background level of aluminum in the Biobío.
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