Journal: Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology

Article Title: Organic and inorganic pollutant concentrations suggest anthropogenic contamination of soils along the Manali-Leh Highway, northwestern Himalaya, India

Authors: Rajarshi Dasgupta, Brooke E. Crowley, and J. Barry Maynard

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Online Resource 1: Electronic Supplementary Materials

Table S1 Comparison of traffic volume along the Manali-Leh Highway with other localities discussed in the text. NA denotes age not provided in the publication.

Location / Age of the road (years) at time of publication / Average number of vehicles per day / Source
Manali-Leh Highway, India / 35 / 137a / This study
Auckland, New Zealand / 17 / 10,000 to 50,000 / Ward et al. (1977)
Karachi, Pakistan / NA / 10,000 to 40,000 / Iqbal (1988)
Cincinnati, USA / 38 / 15,6670 / Turer et al. (2001)
Corpus Christi, USA / 34 / 45,000 to 48,000 / Turer and Maynard (2003)
Trishuli Highway, Nepal / 47 / 1,569 / Zhang et al. (2012)
Qinghai-Tibet Highway, Tibet / 61 / 1,400 / Zhang et al. (2015)

a Computed from an estimated average of 50,000 vehicles per year (M. Sharma, personal communication).

Site / 2 rings / 3 rings / 4 rings / 5 rings / 6 rings / Source
Kothi / 52.65 / 10 / 18.20 / 11.90 / 7.20 / This study
Jispa / 11.93 / 4.76 / 26.26 / 35.22 / 21.82 / This study
Killingsarai / 46.89 / 7.82 / 20.50 / 10.85 / 13.93 / This study
Diesel vehicle exhaust in Delhi / NA / 31.30 / 57.72 / 7.17 / 3.79 / Khillare et al. (2005)
Diesel truck exhaust in Los Angeles / NA / 19.33 / 68.77 / 9.66 / 2.24 / Rogge et al. (1993)
Dungcake combustion in rural north India / 0.77 / 14.16 / 34.14 / 39.46 / 11.48 / Singh et al. (2013)
Fuelwood combustion in rural north India / 4.37 / 23.14 / 59.77 / 12.72 / NA / Singh et al. (2013)

Table S2 Comparison of the composition of different ringed PAHs in soils along the Manali-Leh Highway with other localities discussed in the text. NA denotes concentrations not provided in the publication. All values are reported in percentage (%).

Table S3 Correlation matrix showing the relationship between total organic carbon (TOC) and 15 of the 16 US EPA-prioritized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (see Table 5 for an explanation of abbreviations used). Acenaphthylene is not included as it was only above detection limits at Jispa. We did not include Total Sulfur (TS) in the matrix because all relationships between TS and variously-weighted PAHs are insignificant (p > 0.05). Single asterisks (*) denote significant relationships at α = 0.05. Double asterisks (**) denote significant relationships at α = 0.01.

TOC / Naph / Ace / Anth / Phen / Flu / Flan / BaA / Chry / Pyr / BaP / BbF / BkF / DbA / BgP / IP
TOC / 1
Naph / -0.44 / 1
Ace / 0.99* / -0.50 / 1
Anth / 0.99* / -0.40 / 0.99 / 1
Phen / 0.99* / -0.41 / 0.99 / 1** / 1
Flu / 0.99 / -0.34 / 0.99 / 0.99* / 0.99* / 1
Flan / 0.94 / -0.13 / 0.92 / 0.96 / 0.96 / 0.98 / 1
BaA / 1* / -0.38 / 0.99 / 1* / 1* / 0.99* / 0.96 / 1
Chry / 0.97 / -0.66 / 0.98 / 0.95 / 0.96 / 0.93 / 0.83 / 0.95 / 1
Pyr / 1** / -0.46 / 1* / 1* / 1* / 0.99 / 0.94 / 0.99 / 0.97 / 1
BaP / 1* / -0.47 / 1* / 0.99* / 1* / 0.99 / 0.94 / 1 / 0.97 / 1** / 1
BbF / 1** / -0.45 / 1* / 0.99* / 1* / 0.99 / 0.94 / 1* / 0.97 / 1** / 1** / 1
BkF / 1* / -0.40 / 1* / 1** / 1** / 1* / 0.96 / 1* / 0.95 / 1* / 1* / 1* / 1
DbA / 0.93 / -0.74 / 0.95 / 0.92 / 0.92 / 0.89 / 0.76 / 0.91 / 0.99 / 0.94 / 0.94 / 0.94 / 0.92 / 1
BgP / 0.98 / -0.62 / 0.98 / 0.97 / 0.97 / 0.95 / 0.86 / 0.96 / 1* / 0.98 / 0.98 / 0.98 / 0.97 / 0.99 / 1
IP / 1* / -0.46 / 1* / 0.99* / 1* / 0.99 / 0.94 / 1 / 0.97 / 1** / 1** / 1** / 1* / 0.94 / 0.98 / 1

Fig. S1 The second order polynomial curve, based on Councell et al. (2004; Fig 3), used to determine the rate of anthropogenic Zn accumulation. Councell and colleagues plotted annual Zn accumulation rate in the soil against vehicle density in the United States and used a linear curve to estimate Zn accumulation rate per given vehicle load. However, we found that a second order polynomial fits their data better and modified the figure accordingly. Moreover, their linear best-fit line cannot provide estimates for low vehicular density.