Volume 63, no. 12, p. 4759–4764, 1997. It was brought to our attention after the article was published that we had omitted a reference to a paper published by Bedessem et al. (M. E. Bedessem, N. G. Swoboda-Colberg, and P. S. J. Colberg, FEMS Microbiol. Lett. 152:213–218, 1997). That study pointed out that naphthalenol was tentatively identified as a potential metabolic intermediate of naphthalene degradation from aquifer enrichments under sulfate-reducing conditions. In addition, our highly enriched consortia may not have been the first transferable aerobic PAH cultures to be documented. Indeed, Bedessem et al. reported enrichments on naphthalene which were transferable.
Considering this information, we would revise the sentence beginning on page 4759, column 1, line 25, of our paper to read as follows. “At present, although an anaerobic transferable enrichment has been reported (Bedessem et al.), no pure culture has been isolated. In addition, there are no proposed pathways of anaerobic PAH degradation, although Bedessem et al. have tentatively identified an intermediate.” In addition, although Coates et al. (reference 5 in our paper) noted that addition of fresh sediment from a contaminated site can shorten the lag for PAH activity in sediment from an uncontaminated site, our report did not deal with fresh sediment but rather with enriched laboratory-propagated consortia. We regret the omission of the reference by Bedessem et al., which does not alter the overall results or conclusions of our paper.