Organochlorine pollutants in soil and mosses from Victoria Land (Antarctica)

This data set reports the measures of organo-chlorine pollutants in soils and mosses from Victoria Land. Total PCB concentration in mosses ranges between 23 and 34 ng g-1 dry wt. Previously reported PCB concentration in Antarctic mosses collected in the same sampling area ranges from <5 to 16 ng g-1 dry wt. The concentration ranges of 4,4'-DDE and 4,4'-DDT were 1.1–7.9 and 0.54–0.91 ng g-1 dry wt., respectively. Similarly to PCB, these compounds exhibit a rather uniform distribution of concentration with less than one order of magnitude of variation. Higher concentrations of 4,4-DDE were found in all samples, which is consistent with a long-range transport as being responsible for the transformation of 4,4’-DDT to 4,4’-DDE after release into the environment. Previous studies of these two pesticides in Antarctic moss samples showed concentration of 0.2–0.5 ng g-1 dry wt. for both compounds. HCB exhibited rather uniform concentration, 0.85–1.9 ng g-1 dry wt.. Previously reported HCB concentrations in Antarctic mosses were 0.3–0.8 ng g-1 dry wt. They involved the largest concentration ranges of all OC analyzed, 0.43–4.0 and 0.18–1.6 ng g-1 dry wt., respectively. The concentration of these two pesticides in previous Antarctic moss studies encompassed 0.2–1.1 and 0.4–1.7 ng g-1, respectively. In all cases except Granite Harbour, α-HCH is found 40 in higher concentration than the γ-isomer. The high proportion of the α-isomer is consistent with previous observations in other remote sites as these areas currently reflect past usage of α-HCH enriched technical mixtures and only pure lindane (γ-HCH) is presently found in the areas under higher anthropogenic influence.
Soil PCB concentration varied between 0.36 and 0.59 ng g-1 dry wt. These values were similar to those reported in lake sediments of Arctic regions, 0.12–0.60 ng g-1 dry wt.
4,4'-DDE and 4,4'-DDT range between 0.053–0.086 and <0.005–0.020 ng g-1 dry wt. Again, the higher abundance of 4,4'-DDE over 4,4'-DDT precludes that their occurrence may be due to recent spillages. Among soil HCH, only the isomer α-HCH was found above limit of detection between <0.01 and 0.026 ng g-1. As for moss samples, the dominance of the α-isomer is consistent with the observations in remote sites.HCB ranged between 0.034 and 0.17 ng g-1 dry wt. These concentrations are also similar to those reported in Arctic lake sediments .These low values of the Antarctic mosses and soils reflect the absence of local pollution sources near the sampling sites and are consistent with the lower use of organo-chlorine compounds in the southern hemisphere.