Wa. Burns et al., A PRINCIPAL-COMPONENT AND LEAST-SQUARES METHOD FOR ALLOCATING POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC-HYDROCARBONS IN SEDIMENT TO MULTIPLE SOURCES, Environmental toxicology and chemistry, 16(6), 1997, pp. 1119-1131
A method was developed to allocate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (P
AHs) in sediment samples to the PAH sources from which they came. The
method uses principal-component analysis to identify possible sources
and a least-squares model to find the source mix that gives the best f
it of 36 PAH analytes in each sample. The method identified 18 possibl
e PAH sources in a large set of field data collected in Prince William
Sound, Alaska, USA, after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, including
diesel oil, diesel soot, spilled crude oil in various weathering state
s, natural background, creosote, and combustion products from human ac
tivities and forest fires. Spill oil was generally found to be a small
increment of the natural background in subtidal sediments, whereas co
mbustion products were often the predominant sources for subtidal PAHs
near sites of past or present human activity. The method appears to b
e applicable to other situations, including other spills.