Soil PAHs against varied land use of a small city (Tezpur) of middle Brahmaputra Valley: seasonality, sources, and long-range transport

This study reports soil PAHs from a small city (Tezpur) of the mid-Brahmaputra Valley. The soil PAHs has been assessed from representative land use using detailed protocol of extracting, cleaning, and quantitative analysis by HPLC technique. The concentrations of PAHs showed minimum spatial variability and yet showed strong seasonal variability, which could be typical of small cities having weak local source strengths. On examining the air mass reaching the region, it appeared that there has been explicit effect of long-range transport. The HYSPLIT back trajectories reaching the study area during different seasons showed variations in terms of their origins and transport pathways. This might have led to differential long-range transport of PAHs, which is reflected in the seasonal variabilities of the concentrations of PAHs. The seasonal variations were much profound with the highest ΣPAHs concentration during post-monsoon (7961 ng g⁻¹) followed by pre-monsoon (2414 ng g⁻¹) and monsoon (773 ng g⁻¹) season. The toxicity of the PAHs was examined as BaP equivalent (BaPeq) concentrations, which were found to be on the lower side as compared to the studies conducted elsewhere. The percentage contribution of 3- and 4-ring compounds was found to be greater. An attempt also was made to apportion the sources of the PAHs by application of diagnostic ratios, principal component analysis–multiple linear regression (PCA-MLR) and hierarchal cluster analysis (HCA), which revealed that coal and biomass burning and vehicular emissions are the major contributors to the PAHs load in Tezpur city.