TBT contamination identified in Antarctic marine sediments

TBT contamination of remote marine environments: Ship groundings and ice-breakers as sources of organotins in the Great Barrier Reef and Antarctica

“…The unique animals and plants, which live in these divergent habitats are well protected by national and international laws and treaties. However, despite the controls that are in place to protect these fragile ecosystems, ship groundings on reefs of the GBR (Haynes and Loong, 2002) and abrasion of antifouling paints from icestrengthened ships in Antarctica (Negri et al, 2004) have resulted in extreme, localised concentrations of contamination of marine sediments by the highly toxic organotin antifoulant TBT.…”

Environmental application of elemental speciation analysis based on liquid or gas chromatography hyphenated to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry—A review

“…Moreover, the occurrence of TBT contaminations had previously been reported for other remote areas of the southern hemisphere (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef and Antarctica) [110,111]. Recently, this research was summarized in a review by Negri and Marshall and evaluated from an ecological and ecotoxicological perspective [112].…”

Developing Microbial Inocula to Support Biofuel Crop Cultivation on Tributyltin Contaminated Marine Sediments

“…Nonetheless information on the mechanism of sequential dealkylation of TBT is still limited therefore, for this study gas chromatography (GC) was employed for the analysis of sediment on seedlings roots for the identification of TBT and degrading species to determine the mechanism of interest. Gas chromatography (GC) is the most universal instrument used for organotin analysis due to its high resolution, separation ability and sensitivity of detectors available [7,10,12,13,14,15]. The GC-MS was operated in full scan mode and selective ion monitoring mode (SIM) which allowed for detection of specific analysts and increased sensitivity relative to full scan mode.…”

“…This is further compounded by the fact that in these environments TBT bonds to suspended material, such as sediment, where it can persist unaltered for decades under anaerobic conditions [2]. Marine pollution does not distinguish national, regional or conservation boundaries, therefore impacts from TBT can be seen or anticipated even in protected areas like aqua farms and world heritage sites effecting aquaculture and undisturbed ecosystems such as the Antarctica and the Great Barrier Reef [12,13,14].…”