The Lake Michigan contaminant transport and fate model LM2-Toxic was developed to gain a better understanding of PCB cycling dynamics and to predict environmental exposure concentrations of 54 polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners in Lake Michigan water and sediment from 1994 to 2055 as a function of a variety of forcing functions including constant conditions, continued recovery forecasts, and load reduction scenarios. LM2-Toxic couples the organic carbon sorbent and chemical dynamics conceptualized for a natural water system. Based on 1994–1995 model results, a mass budget analysis showed that air-water exchange was the most important mass transfer process. Volatilization was the largest PCB loss and gas absorption was the largest PCB input to Lake Michigan. Model-predicted environmental exposure concentrations suggest that the water quality criterion for protection of wildlife (0.074 ng/L) and human health (0.026 ng/L) will be attained in approximately 2018 and 2045, respectively, based on a slow recovery scenario. For this scenario, atmospheric components, including vapor phase concentration and wet and dry particulars loadings, were assumed to decline with a 20 year half-life, and tributary loadings were assumed to decline with a 13 year half-life.
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1 March 2009
The Lake Michigan Contaminant Transport and Fate Model, LM2-Toxic: Development, Overview, and Application
Xiaomi Zhang,
Kenneth R. Rygwelski,
Ronald Rossmann
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Journal of Great Lakes Research
Vol. 35 • No. 1
March 2009
Vol. 35 • No. 1
March 2009
Fate and transport model
forecast
Lake Michigan
Multimedia interaction
organic carbon
PCBs