Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Volume 59, Issue 5, Pages 856-869Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00267-017-0824-5
Keywords
Pollution; River; Water quality criteria; Ecotoxicology; Chile; Risk assessment
Categories
Funding
- FON-DAP [151300]
- CONICYT Chile
- University of Alcala [CCG2013/EXP-054]
- Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of Spain [CGL2015-65346-R]
- Becas Santander Espana
- grant Giner de los Rios of the University of Alcala (Spain)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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 Biobio 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 Biobio 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 Biobio watershed, considering the toxicity of mixtures of chemicals to endemic species, and the high natural background level of aluminum in the Biobio.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available