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Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents

[Image: see text] To reduce sulfur emission from global shipping, exhaust gas cleaning systems are increasingly being installed on board commercial ships. These so-called scrubbers extract SO(X) by spraying water into the exhaust gas. An effluent is created which is either released directly to the s...

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Autores principales: Thor, Peter, Granberg, Maria E., Winnes, Hulda, Magnusson, Kerstin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Chemical Society 2021
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8154367/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33876924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c07805
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author Thor, Peter
Granberg, Maria E.
Winnes, Hulda
Magnusson, Kerstin
author_facet Thor, Peter
Granberg, Maria E.
Winnes, Hulda
Magnusson, Kerstin
author_sort Thor, Peter
collection PubMed
description [Image: see text] To reduce sulfur emission from global shipping, exhaust gas cleaning systems are increasingly being installed on board commercial ships. These so-called scrubbers extract SO(X) by spraying water into the exhaust gas. An effluent is created which is either released directly to the sea (open-loop system) or treated to remove harmful substances before release (closed-loop system). We found severe toxic effects in the ubiquitous planktonic copepod Calanus helgolandicus of exposure to effluents from two closed-loop systems and one open-loop system on North Sea ships. The effluents contained high concentrations of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including alkylated PAHs. We observed significantly elevated mortality rates and impaired molting already in the lowest tested concentrations of each effluent: 0.04 and 0.1% closed-loop effluents and 1% open-loop effluent. These concentrations correspond to total hydrocarbon concentrations of 2.8, 2.0, and 3.8 μg L(–1), respectively, and compared to previous studies on oil toxicity in copepods, scrubber effluents appear more toxic than, for example, crude oil. None of the individual PAHs or heavy metals analyzed in the effluents occurred in concentrations which could explain the high toxicity. The effluents showed unexpected alkylated PAH profiles, and we hypothesize that scrubbers act as witch’s cauldrons where undesired toxic compounds form so that the high toxicity stems from compounds we know very little about.
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spelling pubmed-81543672021-05-27 Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents Thor, Peter Granberg, Maria E. Winnes, Hulda Magnusson, Kerstin Environ Sci Technol [Image: see text] To reduce sulfur emission from global shipping, exhaust gas cleaning systems are increasingly being installed on board commercial ships. These so-called scrubbers extract SO(X) by spraying water into the exhaust gas. An effluent is created which is either released directly to the sea (open-loop system) or treated to remove harmful substances before release (closed-loop system). We found severe toxic effects in the ubiquitous planktonic copepod Calanus helgolandicus of exposure to effluents from two closed-loop systems and one open-loop system on North Sea ships. The effluents contained high concentrations of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including alkylated PAHs. We observed significantly elevated mortality rates and impaired molting already in the lowest tested concentrations of each effluent: 0.04 and 0.1% closed-loop effluents and 1% open-loop effluent. These concentrations correspond to total hydrocarbon concentrations of 2.8, 2.0, and 3.8 μg L(–1), respectively, and compared to previous studies on oil toxicity in copepods, scrubber effluents appear more toxic than, for example, crude oil. None of the individual PAHs or heavy metals analyzed in the effluents occurred in concentrations which could explain the high toxicity. The effluents showed unexpected alkylated PAH profiles, and we hypothesize that scrubbers act as witch’s cauldrons where undesired toxic compounds form so that the high toxicity stems from compounds we know very little about. American Chemical Society 2021-04-20 2021-05-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8154367/ /pubmed/33876924 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c07805 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society Permits the broadest form of re-use including for commercial purposes, provided that author attribution and integrity are maintained (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Thor, Peter
Granberg, Maria E.
Winnes, Hulda
Magnusson, Kerstin
Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title_full Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title_fullStr Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title_full_unstemmed Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title_short Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents
title_sort severe toxic effects on pelagic copepods from maritime exhaust gas scrubber effluents
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8154367/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33876924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c07805
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