Principal component analysis application in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons “mussel watch” analyses for source identification Original Research Article

This article aims to show how a careful pre-treatment of data can be used to demonstrate various features embedded in a given data set obtained from a “mussel watch” survey, namely site- and source-specific characteristics and weather-related changes, and to provide indications so as to allow comparison with analyses performed on another substrate matrix. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) biomonitored in the aquatic environment by means of caged mussels are compared by site and by season. Moreover, their fingerprints were compared to marine sediments and atmospheric airborne PAHs. The characterization of the sampling stations by means of the multivariate technique called principal component analysis (PCA) allows distinguishing the prevalence of pyrogenic or petrogenic types of pollution and between two kinds of combustibles. This was confirmed by jointly analyzing the percent composition of sea (mussel) and air (filter) samples.