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Description
Pollution in coastal waters can be transferred to the atmosphere in sea spray aerosol produced by wind and waves. Onshore winds transport the airborne pollution back to land and expose large numbers of people along the coast and inland. We investigated airborne transfer of coastal water pollution in Imperial Beach, California, which has suffered from high levels of coastal water pollution for decades. Rain and inadequate infrastructure lead to the discharge of large amounts of raw sewage and urban-industrial runoff into the Tijuana River and then to the coastal waters of Tijuana and Imperial Beach. We sampled the Tijuana River, coastal water, and aerosols in Imperial Beach following rain events from January till May 2019. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we identify specific bacteria taxa as tracers of the Tijuana River flowing into coastal waters and returning back over land in coastal aerosol. The bacteria include taxa associated with Tijuana sewage and comprise up to 76% of the airborne bacteria community. Furthermore, we use non-targeted tandem mass spectrometry to identify chemical links between the Tijuana River and aerosols coming from the ocean. They are dominated by anthropogenic compounds of both terrestrial and marine origins. Our results indicate that Imperial Beach and Tijuana coastal communities inhale aerosolized coastal water pollution in daily onshore winds, during pollution events that can occur on hundreds of days each year. Extreme precipitation events are predicted to become more common in our changing climate, potentially exacerbating coastal water pollution and airborne exposure. These findings highlight that we must minimize coastal water pollution and investigate the health effects of exposure via this airborne exposure pathway. UCSD Understanding and Protecting the Planet (UPP) Daniel Petras: German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant PE 2600/1 Allegra T. Aron: Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation Research Data Curation Program, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/rdcp) Pendergraft, Matthew A.; Belde-Ferre, Pedro; Petras, Daniel; Morris, Clare K.; Mitts, Brock A.; Aron, Allegra T.; Bryant, MacKenzie; Schwartz, Tara; Ackerman, Gail; Humphrey, Greg; Dorrestein, Pieter C.; Knight, Rob; Prather, Kimberly A. (2022). Data from: Bacterial and chemical evidence of coastal water pollution from the Tijuana River in sea spray aerosol. UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J07944V3
Type
dataset
Identifier
ark:/20775/bb41049332
Language
English
Subject
Water pollution Sea spray aerosol (SSA) Airborne exposure 16S rRNA sequencing Mass spectrometry Coastal Pathogen Tijuana River (Mexico and Calif.) Scripps Insitution of Oceanography (Calif.) Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico) Imperial Beach (Calif.) Archaea Bacteria
Place
Tijuana River (Mexico and Calif.) Scripps Insitution of Oceanography (Calif.) Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico) Imperial Beach (Calif.)
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