Assessing the Risk of Hydroxybenzene Contamination in Fish Raised on a Chinese Aquaculture Farm

ABSTRACT We estimated the risk posed by hydroxybenzene in farm-raised Crucian carps (Carassius carassius) from a pond on a fish farm in Beijing, China, by analyzing a time-series of observed hydroxybenzene concentrations in fish within a culturing season in year 2006. We used the basic linear regression to model the data and forecast the probability of hydroxybenzene concentration in pond fish exceeding selected health effect criteria (the risk) using Monte Carlo simulation. The risk is highly correlated with the time a fish stays in the pond. The results indicate that the risk–days in pond relationship resembles a sigmoid function with an inflection point around 150 days. The resulting model can be used to demonstrate the benefit of improving water quality in terms of increased fish production.