Picenes and alkalyted chrysenes are highly abundant compound classes in lignites. Hence, we found them in high concentrations in a German lignite extract from a former study. Since this extract gave only low PAH content but showed high mutagenicity and dioxin-like activity we decided to separately test these compounds for their toxic potential. Furthermore, we investigated bioavailability of picenes and chrysenes by means of a Lumbriculus variegatus bioaccumulation test.
All experiments yielded data that let us conclude that alkylated chrysenes and picenes, though highly abundant in lignite, pose only a low environmental risk (fulltext access limited to subscribers of the journal, sorry...).
