National Status & Trends Program for Marine Environmental Quality
Date
1991-04
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Abstract
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Status and
Trends (NS&T) Program has analyzed samples of surface sediment collected at almost
300 coastal and estuarine sites throughout the United States since 1984. When the first
NS&T report on sediments (NOAA, 1988) was written, only about 200 sites had been
sampled. This second report is based on more data. Even with this larger data set, the
original observation holds that most of the highest concentrations for any particular
contaminant are found at sites nearthe urban areas of Boston, New York, San Diego, Los
Angeles, and Seattle. The overall concentration distributions for each contaminant are
approximately lognormal, allowing a definition of “high”concentrations as those exceeding
the mean plus one standard deviation of the lognormal distribution. Those “high”
concentrations are useful for comparisons within the NS&Tdata set and with other reports
on sediment contamination. The “high” concentrations in units of pg/g of dry fine-grained
sediment for each contaminant are (in parentheses): Ag (1.2), As (24), Cd (1.2), Cr (230),
Cu (84), Hg (0.49), Pb (89), Sn (8.5), Zn (270), LMWPAH (l.O), HMWPAH (3.0), tDDT
(0.037), and tPCB (0.20).
Description
Keywords
Data, Chemical Contaminants