Study To Identify Pollution Sources In Urban Water Bodies

摘要

Sealcoat, a black liquid mostly coal-tar or asphalt-based, provides protection and beauty when applied to asphalt pavements and has very high polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) concentrations. Sealcoat products from coal-tar have total PAH concentrations much greater than the sealcoat products from asphalt. Sealcoats are popularly used to domestic driveways, parking lots of commercial buildings, business parks and so on. The sealcoat wears off the pavement relatively rapidly, especially in areas of high traffic, and therefore resealing is performed on many surfaces every two to three years. The runoffs from these places have very high concentrations of PAH when compared to the runoffs from places that do not use such sealants. Incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons such as coal and gasoline form PAH and are serious threats to the health of all life forms due to their toxicity to aquatic life and mostly being carcinogenic to human health.