Seasonal attributes of urban soil PAHs of the Brahmaputra Valley.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous organic pollutants, which are both toxic and carcinogenic. In the present study seasonally collected composite soil samples of Guwahati city of the Brahmaputra Valley were analysed for of PAHs by HPLC column. Black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC) of soil samples were analysed by thermochemical oxidation method in a TOC analyzer. Mean concentrations of ∑PAHs (USEPA 16) were found to be 5570168±7003, 9052±1292 and 19294±17827 ng g(-1) during monsoon, pre- and post-monsoon seasons, respectively. Two- and 4-ring PAHs dominated and the 2-ring PAHs were particularly abundant during post-monsoon period. The carcinogenic potentials of PAHs were calculated as BaP equivalents, which was found to be maximum (1167.064 ng Ba Pq g(-1)) at industrial site. Diagnostic ratios of marker species indicated for pyrogenic origins of PAHs. Sources were indentified and contribution of individual sources was quantified by multivariate hyphenated model - Principal Component Analysis-Multiple Linear Regression (PCA-MLR). Mobile sources like the vehicular traffic were found to have contributed ∼63% to the PAHs load. The correlations of individual PAHs with BC or OC showed seasonal variations. High dependencies of PAHs on BC/OC ratios were found indicating that BC could be interfering with the association of PAHs and OC. However, such relationships showed seasonal bias and high positive dependencies were found during pre-monsoon period only. Strong relationships were found between PAHs and BC/OC during monsoon and post-monsoon seasons.