PCBs and OCPs in Sediment Cores from the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada: Evidence of Fluvial Inputs and Time Lag in Delivery to Coring Sites
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Three sediment cores were collected along the longitudinal axis of the Laurentian Trough in the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (LSLE) and an additional one at the junction of the Estuary and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After core-slicing, each sediment layer was analyzed for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and some organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) including p,p'-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites, hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and Mirex. 210Pb activity was also measured in these sediments, which allowed us to confirm that these cores were too much affected by the overall impact of surface mixing to be dated. Nevertheless, POP sedimentary profiles in cores from the LSLE upstream stations showed well-defined subsurface peak concentrations. Apparently, the peak inputs of POPs to these sediment cores had occurred after the years of maximum sales and production of these chemicals in North America, suggesting a time lag in the delivery of POPs to the LSLE sediments. Concentrations of POPs in the LSLE surface sediments as well as POP inventories in sediment cores decreased in the seaward direction, confirming that the head of the LSLE acts as a sink for sediments and associated constituents. Surface concentrations of sigmaPCBs, sigmaDDTs, and HCB in the most upstream core were on average similar to those reported in two fluvial lakes of the St. Lawrence River but were between 12 and 39 times lower than those from Lake Ontario. For Mirex, the surface concentration in that core was 5 and 130 times lower than the average values found in the fluvial lakes and Lake Ontario, respectively. Differences between Lake Ontario sediment cores and the most upstream core from the LSLE were much smaller on the basis of POP inventories than surface concentrations of POPs, but were still important. The total burdens of POPs in LSLE sediments below the 200 m isobath were 8704 kg for sigmaPCBs, 1825 kg for sigmaDDTs, 319 kg for HCB, and 27.5 kg for Mirex. These values represent between 1% and 10% of the total burdens of these POPs in Lake Ontario sediments. The estimated contribution of POPs by direct atmospheric deposition into the water column area of the LSLE represented at most 30% of the total sediment burdens of POPs in the LSLE, illustrating the importance of fluvial inputs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".