Historical mass balance of cadmium decontamination trends in a major European continent-ocean transition system: Case study of the Gironde Estuary.

Despite the effective remediation efforts following the end of the metallurgic activity thirty years ago upstream the Lot River watershed, the levels of cadmium (Cd) accumulated in wild oysters from the downstream Gironde Estuary still exceed nowadays the admissible human consumption limit (5 mg/kg, d.w.). The main goal of this work is to quantify the role of sediments as long-term intra-estuarine sources or sinks of Cd and the transport of this contaminant towards the estuary mouth taking as case study the example of the highly turbid Gironde Estuary. The original estimation for the annual net fluxes of the suspended particulate matter ( [Formula: see text] and particulate Cd ( [Formula: see text] ) presented in this work between 1990 and 2020 indicates that 80% of the Cd discharged into the ocean is in dissolved form (Cd

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