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Record W7115810299

DDT, its Metabolites, and PAHs in Soils and Sediments from Cootes Paradise

2025· dissertation· en· W7115810299 on OpenAlexaboutno aff

Bibliographic record

VenueMacSphere (McMaster University) · 2025
Typedissertation
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicToxic Organic Pollutants Impact
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsTopsoilContaminationSedimentWetlandSoil waterWatershedPollutantMarshPollution
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Cootes Paradise, located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada is a 450-acre wetland marsh and acts as an important habitat for local species of plants, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Recent detection of the legacy insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) within the tissue of frogs from Cootes Paradise highlighted a potential threat to ecological health and sparked new research into their habitat. Alongside these legacy contaminants, the City of Hamilton is a large metropolitan area with a storied industrial history, leading to a reputation of poor air quality and sediment contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This research aimed to further expand the body of knowledge on contamination of DDT and its metabolites DDD and DDE within the watershed of Cootes Paradise, as well as begin to assess the extent of PAH contamination by analyzing the presence of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 16 Priority Pollutant PAHs. Results of this study further demonstrate that DDT, DDD, and DDE persist in the topsoil of areas adjacent to the main waterbody of Cootes Paradise. Sampling areas were chosen using ArcGIS Pro, based on the slope of the area as well as the proximity to the water of Cootes Paradise. 12 topsoil samples consisting of 0 to 10 centimeter and 10-to-20-centimeter soil intervals, and two sediment cores were sampled, and extracted and analyzed following a modified EPA organochlorine method. DDD and DDE were primarily observed in samples with high organic carbon content, indicating that degradation is likely associated with carbon content. Contamination of DDx also was the highest along the Southern shores, with a decrease in total DDx concentration and metabolite presence as you move North through Cootes Paradise. PAH contamination was consistent throughout marsh soil and sediment samples with comparable proportions of the 16 analyzed PAHs throughout sampling areas. This suggests one common source of PAH contamination acting as an input to Cootes Paradise. Diagnostic ratio data are indicative of sources such as industrial emissions; however, it is likely that mixing of vehicular emissions also occurs before PAHs are ultimately deposited to the marsh.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.306
Threshold uncertainty score0.616

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0030.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.009
GPT teacher head0.201
Teacher spread0.193 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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