The impact of three related emission industries on regional atmospheric chlorinated paraffins pollution

Identifying the contributions of various chlorinated paraffins (CPs) sources in the environment plays an important practical role in the prevention and control of the CPs contamination. However, little is known about how main CP-related emission industries affect the regional atmospheric characteristics of CPs, including CP products industry, metal working industry, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) industry. In this study, 60 passive air samples were collected from five typical cities in Henan Province, China, which had serious CP pollution and different structures of CP-related emission industry. Short chain CPs (SCCPs) and medium chain CPs (MCCPs) were detected in all samples in concentrations ranging of 2.6–7.7 × 102 and 2.1–4.3 × 102 ng m−3, respectively, which were higher than those in most reports. Moreover, Luoyang (LY) is different from other cities, showing a relatively severe MCCP contaminations. The CP pollution characteristics between different cities are obviously affected by the proportion of local CP-related industries. According to the results of cluster heatmaps, the local CP-related emission industrial structure had a greater impact on MCCPs pollution than SCCPs. Additionally, the contribution of metal working industry was beyond that of PVC production industry and CP products industry. [Display omitted] •The mean concentration of CPs in the five cities is as high as 3.0 × 102 ng m−3.•LY has centralized industrial areas and a higher MCCPs pollution level than SCCPs.•The MCCPs pollution is more easily affected by the related industrial structure.•The metal working industry contributes the most to the MCCPs pollution.