Kwok Kevin W H, Bjorgesaeter Anders, Leung Kenneth M Y, Lui Gilbert C S, Gray John S, Shin Paul K S, Lam Paul K S
The Swire Institute of Marine Science and Division of Ecology & Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Hong Kong , Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China.
Environ Toxicol Chem. 2008 Jan;27(1):226-34. doi: 10.1897/07-078.1.
Field data of benthic communities and contaminant loadings in marine sediments measured in parallel can be used to derive sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) using a field-based species sensitivity distribution (f-SSD) approach. Recently, SQGs have been successfully derived from f-SSDs for the Norwegian continental shelf with an extensive survey (>1 million km(2)) and a large data set (1,902 sampling stations with 1,944 species). The present study examined the practicality of this approach in deriving SQGs for a much smaller geographical area, namely, the marine environment of Hong Kong (sea area: 1,651 km(2)), making use of databases of the government of Hong Kong special administrative region. As the construction of f-SSDs requires the use of a collection of responses from individual species to a chemical gradient in sediment, data screening criteria on the minimum abundance of the species were evaluated and optimized to ensure sufficient statistical power for estimating these responses. Sediment quality guidelines were derived for nine trace metals, total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and total polychlorinated biphenyls and compared with current SQGs in developed countries. The community-adjusted hazardous concentrations of 5% and 10% of the f-SSDs were adopted to represent the threshold effects level (TEL) and predicted effects level (PEL), respectively. The TELs derived from this f-SSD approach compares favorably with current SQGs, while the derived PELs were generally lower than the current SQGs, indicating that they are more protective. The f-SSDs can be directly utilized for probabilistic risk assessment, while the field-based SQGs can be used as site-specific guidelines or integrated into current SQGs. Our results suggest that the f-SSD approach can also be applicable to small areas such as Hong Kong.
通过基于现场的物种敏感性分布（f-SSD）方法，将同时测量的底栖生物群落现场数据和海洋沉积物中的污染物负荷数据用于推导沉积物质量准则（SQG）。最近，通过广泛调查（超过100万平方公里）和大量数据集（1902个采样站，包含1944个物种），成功从f-SSD推导了挪威大陆架的SQG。本研究利用香港特别行政区政府的数据库，检验了该方法在推导更小地理区域（即香港海洋环境，海域面积：1651平方公里）的SQG方面的实用性。由于构建f-SSD需要使用单个物种对沉积物中化学梯度的响应集合，因此评估并优化了关于物种最小丰度的数据筛选标准，以确保有足够的统计能力来估计这些响应。推导了9种痕量金属、总多环芳烃和总多氯联苯的沉积物质量准则，并与发达国家当前的SQG进行了比较。采用f-SSD中5%和10%的群落调整后危险浓度分别代表阈值效应水平（TEL）和预测效应水平（PEL）。通过这种f-SSD方法推导的TEL与当前的SQG相比具有优势，而推导的PEL通常低于当前的SQG，表明它们更具保护性。f-SSD可直接用于概率风险评估，而基于现场的SQG可作为特定场地准则或纳入当前的SQG。我们的结果表明，f-SSD方法也适用于香港这样的小区域。
