Volume 9, Issue 2, September 2014, Pages 175–189
Lorenzo Liberti1
1 Department of Civil Environmental Building Engineering and Chemistry, Technical University of Bari, Bari, Italy
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
An extended investigation carried out after the discovery of excess occurrence of dioxins and PCB in sheep and goat freely grazing around Europe's largest integrated iron and steel (I&S) factory in Taranto industrial area revealed an ubiquitous recent (by dioxins) and historic (by PCB) contamination. Experimental results, including fingerprint and PCA comparison, excluded single-point emission by the I&S factory as well as by other nearby industrial chimneys, pointing out to fugitive diffuse emission escaping from the I&S sinter plant as the contamination source. The occurrence of two routes of environment contamination and their overlapping toxicity effects through the food chain were demonstrated, due primarily to such diffuse emission and secondarily to PCB present in top soil around the industrial area.
Author Keywords: dioxins, PCB, sinter plant, foodstuff, risk analysis.
Lorenzo Liberti1
1 Department of Civil Environmental Building Engineering and Chemistry, Technical University of Bari, Bari, Italy
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
An extended investigation carried out after the discovery of excess occurrence of dioxins and PCB in sheep and goat freely grazing around Europe's largest integrated iron and steel (I&S) factory in Taranto industrial area revealed an ubiquitous recent (by dioxins) and historic (by PCB) contamination. Experimental results, including fingerprint and PCA comparison, excluded single-point emission by the I&S factory as well as by other nearby industrial chimneys, pointing out to fugitive diffuse emission escaping from the I&S sinter plant as the contamination source. The occurrence of two routes of environment contamination and their overlapping toxicity effects through the food chain were demonstrated, due primarily to such diffuse emission and secondarily to PCB present in top soil around the industrial area.
Author Keywords: dioxins, PCB, sinter plant, foodstuff, risk analysis.
How to Cite this Article
Lorenzo Liberti, “Dioxin and PCB contamination around a heavy industrial area: A case history,” International Journal of Innovation and Scientific Research, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 175–189, September 2014.
