Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an important group of organic contaminants present in sewage sludge, due to their persistence, toxic, bioaccumulative and long range transfer. These characters make themselves as Persistent Organic Pollutants(POPs) in Long Range Transboundary Air Pollutions convention(LRTAP) of Europe. A method of the gas chromatographicmass spectrometric (GCMS) determination of PAHs present in sewage sludge was developed and applied to analyzed samples from five sewerage treatment plants (SWTPs), having different treatment types.
PAHs were extracted from freeze-dried samples by toluene 16 hours in a soxhlet extraction system. The sludge extracts were cleaned-up by an activated silica gel column chromatography. The sum of the 16 US Environmental Protection Agency PAHs sewage sludge samples varied from 2.44 to 4.82 ㎍/ g. Concentration of emission carcinogen PAHs(PAHcarc), such as Benzo(a)anthracene, Benzo(b)fluoran- thene, Benzo(k)fluoranthene, Benzo(a)pyrene, Dibenzo(a,h)anthracene and Indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene ranged from 0.62 to 1.03 ㎍/g. The total amount of PAHs emission from sewage sludge in Korea was calculated as a top-down approach. PAHs and ∑PAHcarc from sewage treatment plants had emitted to environment by several pathway. The highest amount of emission to the environment was remarked in the ocean dumping(PAHs and ∑PAHcarc emissions were 1155.95 kg/year and 5040.32 kg/year, respectively).

• Gon Ok(Dioxin Research Center, Pukyong National University)
• Min-Hee Lee(Dioxin Research Center, Pukyong National University)
• Jong-Seob Hwang(Department of Earth Environmental Science, Pukyong National University)
• Dong-Hwan Kim(Dioxin Research Center, Pukyong National University) Corresponding Author