Ptarmigan Bay (Yukon Coast, CA) POPs analysis on permafrost soils

Arctic permafrost soils are important reservoirs of contaminants on time scales ranging from days to millennia. The extensive work in the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) on Arctic contaminants highlights an acute lack of data on contaminants in Arctic soils, particularly below the permafrost table. Here we describe the work carried out on analyses of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in permafrost soils, in the Canadian study area at Ptarmigan Bay (Yukon, CA). Hexachlorobenzene, 13 congeners of Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and 16 individual Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have been analysed in 95 active layer and permafrost core samples. The concentrations have been determined by using Thermo Scientific Dionex ASE 350 and Gas Chromatography - Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry (Trace 1310 GC coupled with TSQ9000 TQMS, Thermo Scientific), following previously reported methods for the determination of organic contaminants in the atmospheric matrix and dry and wet deposition in the Venice Lagoon and the Antarctic atmospheric gas and particle phase (Gambaro et al., 2009; Piazza et al., 2013).