Organic Pollutants in Coastal Waters, Sediments, and Biota: A Relevant Driver for Ecosystems During the Anthropocene?

Abstract

The total number of synthetic organic chemicals introduced to the environment by humans has never been quantified, but it is not lower than thousands. A fraction of these chemicals have toxic effects to coastal organisms and presumably affect ecosystems structure and function. During the last decades, some of the processes affecting the transport, degradation, and fate of a limited number of chemicals have been studied, and the rising concern for environmental risk of organic chemical has lead to the regulation of a few of them by national and international organisms. However, the environmental inventory of organic pollutants is far from being quantified, and current methodologies used in most toxicological tests only allow to determine effects of individual chemicals to organisms. There are major limitations on appropriate methodologies to assess the effects of organic pollutants at population and ecosystem levels and the effects induced by complex mixtures of organic pollutants present in natural environments. The modification of the composition of the biosphere by a myriad of organic pollutants at ultra-trace levels is not yet regarded as another vector of environmental change which is irreversible due to the persistent character of many of these chemicals and due to its global coverage. Here, we claim that the modification of the atmosphere, water, sediments, and biota composition is a factor to be taken into account in coastal ecosystems, and that its pressure on the environment has been exponentially increasing during the last six decades of the anthropocene.

Fugacity approach to evaluate the sediment–water diffusion of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

“…PAHs can enter the aquatic environment through direct input from urban sewage and run-off or indirect atmospheric dry and wet deposition. [1][2][3] Once introduced into water, PAHs with high octanol-water partition coefficients (K OW ) are easily accumulated in sediment due to their hydrophobic characters. Because of the tendency of hydrophobic pollutants sorbed to organic matter and soot carbon, sediments are the ultimate repository for most organic contaminants, which induce the risk to ecosystem in the aquatic environment.…”

A New Glider-Compatible Optical Sensor for Dissolved Organic Matter Measurements: Test Case from the NW Mediterranean Sea

“…As a result of urban, industrial, agriculture and maritime activities, a great diversity of organic pollutants are continuously introduced in the marine environment. These pollutants fuel DOM pools and impact ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycles (Muir and Howard, 2006;Dachs and Méjanelle, 2010;Tornero and Hanke, 2016). Although their fate is unclear, the role of these pollutants is likely significant for the oceanic carbon cycle (González-Gaya et al, 2016).…”

Assessment of two persistent bioaccumulative toxicants in the UNESCO protected river of Osun-Osogbo, Nigeria

“…Heavy metals are naturally released into freshwater environments through weathering of rocks and soils and are important for biochemical and physiological processes of the biota. However, elevated concentrations in sediments and sufficient accumulations in the biota have also been reported to pose a great hazard to freshwater ecosystems and toxicological risk for humans (Chapman and Kimstach 2006;Dachs and Mejanelle 2010;Ray and McCormick-Ray 2014). Among the heavy metals, Cu and Zn are essential for physiological and biochemical processes but are also capable of accumulating in sediments and impacting freshwater biota at elevated concentrations (Campbell and Tessier 1996;Environment Canada 1998).…”