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Sources, Occurrences, and Risks of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydro-Carbons (PAHs) in Bangladesh: A Review of Current Status

Atmosphere 2024 14 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 60 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Mohammad Mazbah Uddin, Fu‐Liu Xu

Summary

This review examines levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), toxic chemicals from burning fossil fuels, across water, soil, air, and seafood in Bangladesh, finding concentrations higher than in most other countries. Health assessments revealed both cancer and non-cancer risks to residents from eating contaminated seafood. While focused on PAHs rather than microplastics directly, the findings are relevant because microplastics can absorb and concentrate these same cancer-causing chemicals, potentially worsening human exposure.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) pollution has emerged as a significant environmental issue in Bangladesh in the recent years, driven by both economic and population growth. This review aims to investigate the current trends in PAHs pollution research, covering sediments, water, aquatic organisms, air particles, and associated health risks in Bangladesh. A comparative analysis with PAHs research in other countries is conducted, and potential future research directions are explored. This review suggests that the research on PAHs pollution in Bangladesh is less well studied and has fewer research publications compared to other countries. Dominant sources of PAHs in Bangladesh are fossil fuel combustion, petroleum hydrocarbons, urban discharges, industrial emissions, shipbreaking, and shipping activities. The concentrations of PAHs in sediments, water, air particles, and aquatic organisms in Bangladesh were found to be higher than those in most of the other countries around the world. Therefore, coastal sediments showed higher PAHs pollution than urban areas. Health risk assessments reveal both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks to residents in Bangladesh due to the consumption of aquatic organisms. According to this investigation, it can be concluded that there are considerably higher PAHs concentrations in different environmental compartments in Bangladesh, which have received less research attention compared with other countries of the world. Considering these circumstances, this review recommends that future PAHs pollution research directions should focus on aquatic ecosystems, shipbreaking areas, air particles, and direct exposure to human health risks. Therefore, this study recommends addressing the identification of PAH sources, bioaccumulation, biomagnification in the food web, and biomarker responses of benthic organisms in future PAHs pollution research.

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