Distribution and potential ecological risk of Cu, Cd, Pb and Zn in surface water and sediment from Tianjin coastal areas of Bohai Bay, China

Coastal and estuarine areas are often the ultimate receptacles of anthropogenic pollutants. Metal pollution is an important environmental problem due to its potential toxicity, persistence, bioaccumulation and biomagnifications through food webs (Tam & Wong 1997, Chen et al. 2000, Klimmek & Stan 2001, PérezRama et al. 2002, Podgurskaya et al. 2004, Cravo & Bebianno 2005). Therefore heavy metal pollution in coastal and estuarine ecosystems is of major concern and has been studied by many researchers worldwide (Maanan et al. 2004, Zhang et al. 2007, Yu et al. 2008, De Mora et al. 2004 Bastami et al. 2012). Pan & Wang (2012) reported that high metal contents can be detected across the coasts in China, which is closely associated with accelerated economic growth in the past decades.