Remoteness from sources of persistent organic pollutants in the multi-media global environment

Abstract

Quantifying the remoteness from sources of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) can inform the design of monitoring studies and the interpretation of measurement data. Previous work on quantifying remoteness has not explicitly considered partitioning between the gas phase and aerosols, and between the atmosphere and the Earth's surface. The objective of this study is to present a metric of remoteness for POPs transported through the atmosphere calculated with a global multimedia fate model, BETR-Research. We calculated the remoteness of regions covering the entire globe from emission sources distributed according to light emissions, and taking into account the multimedia partitioning properties of chemicals and using averaged global climate data. Remoteness for hypothetical chemicals with distinct partitioning properties (volatile, semi-volatile, hydrophilic, low-volatility) and having two different half-lives in air (60-day and 2-day) are presented. Differences in remoteness distribution among the hypothetical chemicals are most pronounced in scenarios assuming 60-day half-life in air. In scenarios with a 2-day half-life in air, degradation dominates over wet and dry deposition processes as a pathway for atmospheric removal of all chemicals except the low-volatility chemical. The remoteness distribution of the low-volatility chemical is strongly dependent on assumptions about degradability on atmospheric aerosols. Calculations that considered seasonal variability in temperature, hydroxyl radical concentrations in the atmosphere and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns indicate that variability in hydroxyl radical concentrations largely determines the seasonal variability of remoteness. Concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) measured in tree bark from around the world are more highly correlated with remoteness calculated using our methods than with proximity to human population, and we see considerable potential to apply remoteness calculations for interpretation of monitoring data collected under programs such as the Stockholm Convention Global Monitoring Plan.

Ten years of global monitoring under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs): Trends, sources and transport modelling

“…The observed changes over time as reported in these articles are compound specific and demonstrate that the regulatory actions established since the 1980s in some regions and integrated in the global SC framework in 2004 have helped decrease the global concentrations of most older POPs (e.g. Cincinelli et al, 2016;Graf et al, 2016;Hung et al, 2016;Rig et et al, 2016;McGoldrick and Murphy, 2016;Venier et al, 2016;Shunthirasingham et al, 2016;Takazawa et al, 2016), but for some of the newer POPs and chemicals of emerging concern [e.g. per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)], clear temporal trends are still not observed Hung et al, 2016;McGoldrick and Murphy, 2016).…”

“…Several of the afore-mentioned studies have noted significant differences in air concentrations observed between urban/urbaninfluenced sites and remote locations (de la Torre et al, 2016;Muñoz-Arnanz et al, 2016;Graf et al, 2016;Shunthirasingham et al, 2016). McGoldrick and Murphy (2016) found that concentration patterns of most POPs in fish follow human population densities in the North American Great Lakes Basin.…”

“…Included in this special issue are eight studies featuring measured concentrations and time trends of POPs in air and/or precipitation from key environmental monitoring programs that contribute data to the GMP. These studies present regionally representative or nation-wide results from Greenland , Spain (de la Torre et al, 2016;Muñoz-Arnanz et al, 2016), the United Kingdom (Graf et al, 2016), the Arctic region , the North American Great Lakes region (Shunthirasingham et al, 2016;Venier et al, 2016) and East Asia (Takazawa et al, 2016). There are also four studies that compiled measured concentrations of POPs in media other than air over long periods of time.…”

“…There are also four studies that compiled measured concentrations of POPs in media other than air over long periods of time. They showcased invaluable time trends of POPs in Trematomus bernacchii in Antartic seawaters (Cincinelli et al, 2016), agricultural and background soil worldwide (Camenzuli et al, 2016), top predator fish (Trout and Walleye) in North America's Great Lakes region (McGoldrick and Murphy, 2016) and biota (polar bears, ringed seals, glaucous gull and eggs, sculpin and Arctic char) in Greenland (Rig et et al, 2016). The observed changes over time as reported in these articles are compound specific and demonstrate that the regulatory actions established since the 1980s in some regions and integrated in the global SC framework in 2004 have helped decrease the global concentrations of most older POPs (e.g.…”

Predicting global scale exposure of humans to PCB 153 from historical emissions

“…Each cell in the original model was divided into 16 new cells, giving a resolution of 3.75 Â 3.75 . 17 Some environmental parameters were reassigned with the meteorological models MPI-ESM and BCCR-BCM 2.0. Chemical transport in association with particles from the soil compartment to the freshwater compartment was excluded in the high resolution model as the parameterization was inappropriate for arid environments.…”