Preliminary comparisons between magnetic susceptibility and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon content in sediments from Hamilton Harbour, western Lake Ontario

Sediments in Hamilton Harbour, a small body of water located at the western end of Lake Ontario, are known to contain high levels of contaminants including heavy metals, PCBs and PAH. In developing a ‘clean-up’ strategy for contaminated sediment, it is necessary to determine what is meant by polluted sediment and then to establish the volume and distribution of the pollutants in the sediment. PAH have been described as priority pollutants, hence they could be used as a discriminant of the depth extent of polluted sediment. To map the spatial extent of polluted sediment using chemical analyses for PAH would be impractical in terms of time and cost. Analyses of samples from a core from the central basin of Hamilton Harbour indicate there is a close correlation between magnetic susceptibility and PAH content. Like previous studies of lake sediments and peat profiles, this correlation suggests that measuring magnetic susceptibility may be useful in providing a rapid and cheap proxy for mapping the distribution of contaminated sediment.