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ABSTRACT
Road-deposited sediment and roadside soil in the urban area of the city of Tijuana were collected and analyzed for 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The ΣPAH concentration for road-deposited sediment (RDS) ranged between 460 and 2027 µg/kg with an average of 933 µg/kg. The ΣPAH concentration in roadside soil was lower than in RDS, with a range between 54 and 1863 µg/kg and a mean value of 308 µg/kg. The diagnostic ratios showed that the PAHs originated mostly from pyrogenic sources such as gasoline and diesel combustion. The results show that PAH concentration in RDS and roadside soils is low when compared with other published studies. The low PAH levels found in this study are possibly related to differences in climate, urban features, and anthropogenic activities conducted in the studied areas. The toxicity equivalent concentrations (TEQ) of PAH calculated were also low in comparison with other studies. This is probably due to the lower concentration of total PAHs and the highly toxic high-molecular-weight PAHs.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Professor Samuel G. Meléndez-Lopez for proofreading an earlier version of this manuscript and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to improve the quality of this article.
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) for awarding a doctoral scholarship to E. García-Flores (scholarship No. 228633) as a graduate student of the Science and Engineering Doctoral Program (MYDCI), and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) for the financial support through its program of research grants (16va convocatoria de apoyo a proyectos de investigación de la UABC).