Partitioning of trace elements in contaminated estuarine sediments: The role of environmental settings

• Partitioning behavior of trace elements in Sydney estuary sediments was elucidated.
• Zinc is the most bioavailable metal in sediments of studied environmental settings.
• Cu, Ni and Pb show significant mobility in sediments of studied environmental settings.
• Industrial activities and stormwater loadings are the likely sources of trace elements.
• Metal bioaccumulation suggests interplay between bioavailability and uptake mechanisms.

Estuarine sedimentary environments safeguard aquatic ecosystem health by attenuating and transforming catchment-derived contaminants. Currently these environments are under severe stress from trace element contamination due to urbanization. Sediments of Sydney estuary (Australia) are highly elevated in a range of metals due to a long period of intense urbanization and industrialization, which has had a considerable influence on coastal ecosystem health and functioning. A three-stage sequential procedure following Bureau Communautaire de Référence (Community Bureau of Reference—BCR) technique was applied to sediments collected from Sydney estuary to determine their quality, elemental partitioning and ecosystem risk in three human-impacted environmental settings (i.e., mangrove-dominated, stormwater-dominated and industrial-dominated sites) and a control site in this coastal ecosystem. In all three environmental settings, Pb and Zn concentrations exceeded Australian Interim Sediment Quality Guidelines-High (ISQG-High) values and were mostly associated with the reducible and acid soluble fractions, respectively. Copper and Cr also exceeded ISQG-High values (especially in the industrial-dominated site), however the majority of these metals were associated with the oxidizable fraction. Arsenic and Ni concentrations were mostly below ISQG-High values (except one of the stormwater-dominated sites) and were associated with the residual fraction. These results suggest that the most easily mobilized metal was Zn followed by Pb and these metals together presented a risk to estuarine ecosystems in the three selected environmental settings. However, these metals are not always the most abundant in tissue of mangroves, oysters or prawns suggesting other mechanisms are important in a complex uptake process.