Emerging and legacy per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances in water, sediment, and air of the Bohai Sea and its surrounding rivers
Abstract
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) contamination in the Bohai Sea and its surrounding rivers has attracted considerable attention in recent years. However, few studies have been conducted regarding the distribution of PFASs in multiple environmental media and their distributions between the suspended particles and dissolved phases. In this study, surface water, surface sediment, and air samples were collected at the Bohai Sea to investigate the concentration and distribution of 39 targeted PFASs. Moreover, river water samples from 35 river estuaries were collected to estimate PFAS discharge fluxes to the Bohai Sea. The results showed that total ionic compound (Σi-PFASs) concentrations ranged from 19.3 to 967 ng/L (mean 125 ± 152 ng/L) in the water and 0.70-4.13 ng/g dw (1.78 ± 0.76 ng/g) in surface sediment of the Bohai Sea, respectively. In the estuaries, Σi-PFAS concentrations were ranged from 10.5 to 13500 ng/L (882 ± 2410 ng/L). In the air, ΣPFAS (Σi-PFASs + Σn-PFASs) concentrations ranged from 199 to 678 pg/m 3 (462 ± 166 pg/m 3 ). Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was the predominant compound in the seawater, sediment, and river water; in the air, 8:2 fluorotelomer alcohol was predominant. Xiaoqing River discharged the largest Σi-PFAS flux to the Bohai Sea, which was estimated as 12,100 kg/y. Some alternatives, i.e., 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonate acid (6:2 FTSA), hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA), and chlorinated 6:2 polyfluorinated ether sulfonic acid (…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The ΣPFASaq concentration, except in upstream regions, far exceeded reported concentrations in other studies by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
“Comparatively, the ΣPFASaq concentration (except in upstream regions) was found to far exceed the reported concentration in other studies by at least 2 orders of magnitude”
From Partitioning behavior of short-chain legacy and novel perfluorinated substances (PFAS) between dissolved and particulate phases in a river-estuary-coast continuum (2025) · cites this paper as Zhao et al., 2020
Cites
Buck, R. C., Franklin, J., Berger, U., Conder, J. M., Cousins, I. T., de Voogt, P., Jensen, A. A., Kannan, K., Mabury, S. A., & van Leeuwen, S. P. (2011) · Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management · doi:10.1002/ieam.258 · Cited by 4,641 · see citing works
Sorption of Perfluorinated Surfactants on Sediments
Higgins, C. P., & Luthy, R. G. (2006) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es061000n · Cited by 1,563 · see citing works
Wang, Z., Cousins, I. T., Scheringer, M., & Hungerbühler, K. (2013) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2013.08.021 · Cited by 924 · see citing works
Worldwide Distribution of Novel Perfluoroether Carboxylic and Sulfonic Acids in Surface Water
Pan, Y., Zhang, H., Cui, Q., Sheng, N., Yeung, L. W. Y., Sun, Y., Guo, Y., & Dai, J. (2018) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.8b00829 · Cited by 679 · see citing works
Gebbink, W. A., van Asseldonk, L., & van Leeuwen, S. P. J. (2017) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.7b02488 · Cited by 438 · see citing works
Zhou, Z., Liang, Y., Shi, Y., Xu, L., & Cai, Y. (2013) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es402120y · Cited by 324 · see citing works
Yu, N., Guo, H., Yang, J., Jin, L., Wang, X., Shi, W., Zhang, X., Yu, H., & Wei, S. (2018) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.8b02492 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
de Solla, S. R., De Silva, A. O., & Letcher, R. J. (2012) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2011.09.011 · Cited by 198 · see citing works
Chen, X., Zhu, L., Pan, X., Fang, S., Zhang, Y., & Yang, L. (2015) · Water Research · doi:10.1016/j.watres.2015.04.032 · Cited by 163 · see citing works
Joerss, H., Apel, C., & Ebinghaus, R. (2019) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.363 · Cited by 156 · see citing works
Perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in riverine and coastal sediments of Laizhou Bay, North China
Zhao, Z., Tang, J., Xie, Z., Chen, Y., Pan, X., Zhong, G., Sturm, R., Zhang, G., & Ebinghaus, R. (2013) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.12.095 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Self-citationMeng, J., Wang, T., Song, S., Wang, P., Li, Q., Zhou, Y., & Lu, Y. (2018) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2018.03.056 · Cited by 82 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Legacy and emerging per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the Bohai Sea and its inflow rivers
Meng, L., Song, B., Zhong, H., Ma, X., Wang, Y., Ma, D., Lu, Y., Gao, W., Wang, Y., & Jiang, G. (2021) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106735 · Cited by 164 · see citing works
Koch, A., Yukioka, S., Tanaka, S., Yeung, L. W. Y., Kärrman, A., & Wang, T. (2021) · Chemosphere · doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130179 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the marine environment: An overview and prospects
Wang, Q., Shao, Y., Leung, K. M. Y., Lam, P. K. S., & Ruan, Y. (2025) · Marine Pollution Bulletin · doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2025.117993 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Shi, D., Pan, Y., Luo, Y., Dong, F., Zhang, J., Xin, X., Li, Y., Dai, J., & Tang, J. (2025) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2025.126133 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Self-citationMayilswami, S., Raval, N. P., Tomar, R., Sharma, S., Praveena, S. M., Kataria, N., Selvasembian, R., Shanmugam, S. R., Nath, R., Malakar, A., et al. (2025) · Environmental Science: Advances · doi:10.1039/d4va00405a · Cited by 11 · see citing works
- Authors
- Zhao, Z., Cheng, X., Hua, X., Jiang, B., Tian, C., Tang, J., Li, Q., Sun, H., Lin, T., Liao, Y., & Zhang, G.
- Affiliations
- Shanghai Ocean University (CN)
- Henan Normal University (CN)
- Nankai University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Tang, Jianhui
- ORCID
- Venue
- Environmental Pollution
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-08
- Volume
- 263
- Issue
- Pt A
- Pages
- 114391
- ISSN
- 0269-7491 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3011130327
- Cited by
- 145
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 6.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Environmental Pollution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Knowledge Repository of Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, CAS (Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Chemistry › Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Toxic Organic Pollutants Impact
- Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Pharmaceutical Science › Fluorine in Organic Chemistry
- Keywords
- per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS contamination, Bohai Sea, river estuary, perfluorooctanoic acid, fluorotelomer alcohols, HFPO-DA, emerging PFASs
- MeSH terms
- China, Environmental Monitoring, Fluorocarbons, Seawater, Water, Water Pollutants, Chemical, Rivers
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
