A new metric for long-range transport potential of chemicals

We propose a new metric for long-range transport potential (LRTP), GIF, based on source-receptor analyses and evaluate the LRTP and persistence of a wide variety of chlorinated and brominated organic compounds using GIF and overall persistence (POV), respectively. We calculated GIF and POV using our global 3D dynamic multimedia model (FATE). Physicochemical properties were obtained from quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) models. The FATE-QSPR combined model enabled us to systematically investigate the LRTP and persistence of a wide variety of chemical substances. On average, the estimated GIF and POV for chlorinated compounds were larger than those for their brominated counterparts, with the largest and smallest values found for polychlorinated biphenyls and polybrominated dibenzodioxins, respectively. We also compared GIF with four differently defined LRTP metrics and two LRTP metrics obtained from a simple model. The results of our analyses indicate that the LRTP ranks can differ considerably among LRTP metrics, the differences being dependent on the governing environmental processes, relevant physicochemical properties, and multimedia model.