The use of hydrophobic resins as analogues for sediment testing

Many of the pollutants that enter the aquatic environment become adsorbed o nto the surface of particles and are carried out of the water column into t he sediments. This phenomenon plays a major part in decontaminating the wat er supply but results in significant concentrations of toxicants entering t he habitat of benthic organisms. It had been thought until fairly recently that the sediments acted as a sink that removed these chemicals from intera ction with the biota, but more recent work has shown that a number of these materials remain bioavailable. Estimating the significance of this problem has been problematic as sediments show considerable spatial and temporal d iversity in the variety and distribution of their properties. The purpose o f this work was to explore the use of artificial particles with known surfa ce properties to study these pollutant-particle-animal interactions. By ide ntifying the factors involved in the binding a nd release of contaminants f rom particles in a controlled way it was hoped to learn something of the me chanisms involved in the natural environment. The results of this study ind icate that there are some simple correlations between the relevant distribu tion coefficients of the pollutants, their environmental fate, and the comp lex behavior and assay of natural sediments.