Production and use of DDT containing antifouling paint resulted in high DDTs residue in three paint factory sites and two shipyard sites, China
Highlights
► DDTs contamination was investigated in paint factory sites and shipyard sites. ► DDT containing antifouling paint served as important fresh sources for DDT pollution. ► Compared with paint factory sites, shipyard sites were more seriously contaminated ► History and capacity of paint production and use largely affected DDTs level.
Introduction
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDT) is a typical persistent organic pollutant (POPs) that possesses high toxicity and low degradability. It was widely used in China as a pesticide from the 1950s until the production of DDT was officially banned in 1983, which accounted for the DDTs detection in agricultural soil (Shi et al., 2005, Gao et al., 2008, Hu et al., 2009a, Hu et al., 2009b) and severe DDTs contamination of pesticide plant sites (Liu et al., 2008a, Liu et al., 2008b, Zhang et al., 2009a, Zhang et al., 2009b). Over more than 30 years, the production of DDT in China was estimated to be 0.4 million metric tons, accounting for 20% of the total world production.
Recently, DDTs were detected in various environmental medium of coastal regions. For example, high DDTs level was detected in 58 sediment samples from nine typical fishing harbors along the coastal line of China and they were generally 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than those of the adjacent estuarine/marine sediments (Lin et al., 2009). And the DDTs residue in a shipyard area of Hong Kong was detected to be 3.6–33.4 mg kg−1 (Chiu et al., 2006). In addition, a recent monitoring campaign of POPs in the atmosphere across Asia, using passive sampling techniques, also reported that the DDT concentrations in the atmosphere over the eastern coastal zone of China, in particular in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) of South China, were the highest in East Asia (Jaward et al., 2005). After the agricultural use of technical DDT has been prohibited, DDT is still allowed to be used for hygiene purposes, such as malaria control, in Asian developing countries, including China, upon the 5-year exemption of the Stockholm Convention. However, this seems inadequate to explain why such high concentrations of DDTs mostly occurred in the coastal regions, provided that dicofol is used both in inland and coastal regions of the country. So the use of DDT containing antifouling paint was identified to be an important source of DDTs in the coastal zone of China.
Since 1950s, DDT began to serve as efficient addictives for antifouling paint. There were 300 000 medium and small size ships widely distributed along the 18 000 km coastline in China, which consumed 10 000 metric tons antifouling paints. Approximately half was DDT based antifouling paint, and the other half was Tributyltin (TBT) based antifouling paint (SEPA GEF Project, 2008). Given to that annually, a great amount of DDT containing antifouling paint were produced and used from the paint factories (antifouling paint manufacturer) and shipyards (antifouling paint consumer), which triggered great potential risk for human health and ecosystem.
However, few efforts have been made on exploring the DDT residues in paint factory sites and shipyard sites, and it is not known yet to what extent these sites were polluted and the exact pollution distribution. The objectives of our study were to (i) determine the spatial distribution of DDTs concentrations in typical paint factory and shipyard sites in China, (ii) identify the difference of DDTs among the sites and propose the major impact factors and (iii) assess the DDTs pollution in paint factory sites and shipyard sites in China. Specifically, we quantified DDTs in soil, sludge and sediment samples collected in three major DDT containing antifouling paint factories from three coastal cities in China (Qingdao, Shanghai and Guangdong) and two major shipyards which used to consume a good amount of such paint located in the city of Weihai and Yangjiang respectively.
Section snippets
Study area and sampling
In this study, among the five target sampling sites, the three located in Qingdao (QD), Shanghai (SH) and Guangzhou (GZ) are paint factories where DDT containing antifouling paint was produced, while those two in Weihai (WH) and Yangjiang (YJ) are shipyards where DDT containing antifouling paint was peeled or sprayed for ships. A total of 55 samples were collected from May 2010 to June 2010. For the paint factories, the sampling points were set to cover the wastewater sewers, the natural soil
Concentrations of DDTs
The mean concentrations, median concentrations and concentration ranges of each DDT compound were summarized in Table 1. It showed that the total DDTs (sum of four isomers) were between 0.06 and 8387.24 mg kg−1. The range of p,p′-DDE was between 0.008 and 203.32 mg kg−1, while the p,p′-DDD was between 0.007 and 399.43 mg kg−1, the o,p′-DDT between 0.001 and 1310.60 mg kg−1 and p,p′-DDT between 0.025 and 6473.88 mg kg−1. However, the percentage of individual compounds in different samples followed
Conclusions
DDT and its metabolites were detected in the three paint factory sites and two shipyard sites. The total DDTs concentrations varied from 0.06 to 8387.24 mg kg−1, which suggested these sites were seriously affected by anthropogenic DDT containing antifouling paint production and use activities. Analysis of the source of DDTs contamination suggested a freshly input source. The DDT metabolites were dominated by DDD, which revealed for most of the samples DDT was preferentially degraded to DDD under
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by Alternatives to DDT Usage in the Production of Antifouling Paint project of United Nations Development Program (3664/CHN10/00043092).
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2023, Science of the Total EnvironmentCitation Excerpt :Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were one of the first POPs to be banned and have been widely used in China for decades. DDTs have been officially banned to use since 1983 in China (Zhao et al., 2021a, 2021b); however, since the United Nations announced a worldwide reactivation of DDT production for malaria control in 2006 (Xin et al., 2011). Novel brominated flame retardants (NBFRs) have become widely available as alternatives to some restricted brominated flame retardants (BFRs) (UNEP, 2009).