Perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in urban surface water of Shijiazhuang, China: Occurrence, distribution, sources and ecological risks

It is extremely important to analyze the contaminative behaviors of Perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) due to their serious threats to urban environments which are closely related to hu-mans. Current study aimed to explore the distribution, source apportionment and ecologi-cal risk assessment of PFAAs in surface water from Shijiazhuang, China. The concentrations of EPFAAs ranged from 19.5 to 125.9 ng/L in the investigation area. Perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS) and perfluoropentanoic acid (PFPeA) were the predominant contaminants (mean value: 14.3ng/L and 16.6 ng/L, respectively). The distribution of PFAAs according to geospa-tial analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) showed that higher levels of E PFAAs were detected in the southern surface water of Shijiazhuang and there was a stepwise de-crease from the wet season to the dry season. Furthermore, based on source apportionment, the dominant potential sources were found to be wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) ef-fluents and industrial discharge. The risk quotients (RQs) revealed low ecological risks of all PFAAs for aquatic organisms in Shijiazhuang surface water. Collectively, this study provided basic data for regulatory strategies for controlling PFAA pollutions in urban surface water. ?? 2022 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )