Notice of RetractionComparison of Density Fractions of Heavy Metals (As, Cd, Cu and Pb) in Sediments Collected from Two Estuaries of Liaodong Gulf, China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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We observed the density fractionation of As, Cd, Cu, Pb, Fe, Mn and TOC in estuarine sediment collected from Wuli Estuary and Xiaolinghe Estuary in the northwest of the Liaodong Gulf, China. It was found that the highest concentrations of metals occurred in the meso-density (2.0 - 2.3 g/cm³) fraction and the highest TOC content was found in the light (<;2.0 g/cm³) fraction. As the biggest fraction, the heaviest (>;2.5 g/cm³) contained the most of metals in the estuary (HLD-1), however, with the transportation of particle from HLD-1 to offshore site (HLD-4) the mesodensity of particle became the main carrier of heavy metals. Density fractionation of heavy metals and organic matter were similar between site HLD-4 and JZ-1, indicating the transportation of heavy metals associated with particulate had same transportation mechanism.