Organochlorine Contaminants In The Muscle Of Striped Bass Illegally Harvested From Shad Gill Nets In The Hudson River Estuary

摘要

From 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company discharged into the Hudson River an estimated 2.7 × 10~5 kg of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the transformer and electrical capacitor manufacturing facilities at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, New York (Thomann et al., 1991). US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) estimates this PCB discharge to be 6.05 × 10~5 kg (USEPA 2002). Based on the documented purchase of 6.05 × 10~7 kg of PCBs, scientists believe that both PCB discharge values may be substantial underestimates (Skinner, personal communication). Sediment-laden contaminants have been intermittently reintroduced via high-discharge events and sediment disturbances caused by different dredging projects in the upper estuary. This has resulted in a downstream PCB gradient within the biota that is inversely correlated to the river kilometers (Rkm) away from the source (Bush et al., 1989; Limburg, 1986). In 1974, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region II first documented the severity of PCB problems in the Hudson River (Nadeau and Davis, 1976).