Differences in phosphine contents of various environment samples and the effecting factors

The phosphine contents of 12 samples from different environments were analyzed. The results indicated that the differences in phosphine contents of samples was of great significance. The phosphine content in sludge from wastewater treatment plant is the highest (21307.4?ng·kg~(-1)) among the samples, which is higher than that in lake sediments, rice field soils, trash samples and marine sediments. The production of phosphine might be one of the important pathway for the removal of phosphate from wastewater treatment. The phosphine contents in the sediments from Taihu Lake were the lowest. The results also showed that the phosphine content was mostly related to the contents of reducing sugar, anaerobic heterotrophic microorganisms and organic phosphate compounds. The correlative indexes (R~2) to these factors were 0.99, 0.92 and 0.81, respectively. However, the phosphine contents were not related to other environmental factors. This result might refer that the formation of phosphine was due to the reduction of organic phosphate compounds by anaerobic heterotrophic microbes using reducing sugars as substracts.