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Regional- and national-scale emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), especially in Eastern China, are of great concern to environmentalists and policy makers. To determine the source-sink dynamics of coastal salt marshes for CFC-11 and CFC-12 in the local atmosphere, we studied a coastal salt marsh in Northern Jiangsu Province, taking measurements of the atmospheric concentrations and fluxes of CFC-11 and CFC-12 using static flux chambers in August (growing season) and December (non-growing season) of 2013, and along both creek-side and vegetated transects. We observed unexpectedly high concentrations of CFC-11 (676.5 × 10⁻¹²) and CFC-12 (794.6 × 10⁻¹²) in the salt marsh in 2013, with predominantly non-local emissions. Overall, the study salt marsh acted as a net sink for CFC-11 and CFC-12, with the average flux ranging from −11.4 μg m⁻² h⁻¹ to 5.0 μg m⁻² h⁻¹ for CFC-11 and from −7.4 μg m⁻² h⁻¹ to 0.7 μg m⁻² h⁻¹ for CFC-12. This clearly indicates that the high concentrations of CFC-11 and CFC-12 measured in the atmosphere were not caused by local emissions; terrigenous sources most likely act as the main exogenous input pathway. Our study suggests that salt marsh ecosystems may be worthy of attention as sinks for CFC-11 and CFC-12; as such, the ecological restoration of salt marshes is critical to better offset increasing CFC-11 and CFC-12 emissions.

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