Fuel fumes and foliage: the fate of speciated gasoline VOCs during phytoremediation and their impact on the bacterial phenotype

Stephen Matheson; Robert Fleck; Thomas Lockwood; Raissa L Gill; Luowen Lyu; Peter J Irga; Fraser R Torpy

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2024.125199

Fuel fumes and foliage: the fate of speciated gasoline VOCs during phytoremediation and their impact on the bacterial phenotype

Environ Pollut. 2024 Oct 26:125199. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2024.125199. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Stephen Matheson¹, Robert Fleck², Thomas Lockwood³, Raissa L Gill⁴, Luowen Lyu⁵, Peter J Irga⁵, Fraser R Torpy²

Affiliations

¹ Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group (PEQR), School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Electronic address: Stephen.Matheson@uts.edu.au.
² Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group (PEQR), School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
³ Hyphenated Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (HyMaS), School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
⁴ Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group (PEQR), School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Australia; Productive Coasts, Climate Change Cluster, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
⁵ Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group (PEQR), School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

PMID: 39490663
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2024.125199

Abstract

The capacity of indoor plants including green walls to capture, deposit and remediate individual volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has been well documented. However, in realistic settings, plant systems are exposed to a complex mixture of VOCs from highly varied various emission sources. Gasoline vapour is one of the major sources of these emissions, containing high concentrations of the carcinogens benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX). Using both solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS) sampling techniques, we assessed the dynamics of individual speciated gasoline VOC phytoremediation from the air and uptake within green wall plant species and growth substrates within a small passive green wall system, along with quantifying the phenotypic changes within the plant-associated bacterial communities resulting from gasoline exposure. Over 8 hours the green wall system achieved 100% removal of atmospheric benzene, 1,2,3-trimethyl, eicosane and hexadecane, benzene 1,3-diethyl-; 1,3,5 cycloheptatriene,7- ethyl and carbonic acid eicosyl vinyl ester. All plant species tested demonstrated the accumulation 45 petrochemical VOCs (pVOCs) with Spathiphyllum wallisii successfully accumulating the majority of pVOC functional groups after 24 h of gasoline exposure. Within the plants phyllospheric bacterial communities, changes in both cellular complexity and granularity appeared to increase as a result of gasoline exposure, while cell size diminished. This work provides novel findings on the VOC removal processes of botanical systems for realistic and highly toxic VOC profiles.

Keywords: Green wall; Indoor air quality; Phytoremediation; VOCs; gasoline vapour.