American Chemical Society, Environmental Science and Technology, 6(48), p. 3245-3252, 2014
DOI: 10.1021/es4026003
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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). 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 the smallest values found in 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 indicated that the LRTP ranks could differ considerably between LRTP metrics, the differences being dependent on the governing environmental processes, relevant physicochemical properties, and multimedia model.