Baseline study of perfluorooctane sulfonate occurrence in mussels, Mytilus galloprovincialis, from north-central Portuguese estuaries

摘要

Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) can be produced synthetically or through the degradation and/or metabolism of other synthetically produced fluorochemicals. Recent studies have shown that PFOS is persistent, bio-accumulative, showing little to no biodegradation (Key et al., 1998), and is being globally distributed in living organisms (Giesy and Kannan, 2001, 2002; Kannan et al., 2001a,b; Kannan et al., 2002a,b,c). Organofluo-rine molecules have unique physical properties and most fate and effect models developed for organochlorine compounds research are not directly applicable to them. Accumulation patterns seem to be different from those observed for other organohalogen compounds, such as PCBs and DDTs, since no clear relationship with age and/or sex has been determined (Giesy and Kannan, 2002). Concern over environmental pollution by these emerging chemicals has been growing in the last years and is a subject of current interest. Data on occurrence and distribution of perfluorinated organochemicals in the environment are needed for accurate risk assessments worldwide.