Line ferries and cargo ships for the monitoring of marine contaminants of emerging concern: Application along a Europe-Arctic transect

Embargo until September 17, 2023 Contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) are a focus in marine protection. Several CECs are released with wastewater effluents to coastal environments and their offshore occurrence has been recently documented. Routine monitoring is key for implementing marine protecti...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Hazardous Materials
Main Authors: Brumovský, Miroslav, Bečanová, Jitka, Sáňka, Ondřej, Løken, Katharina Bjarnar, Baho, Didier Ludovic, Sørensen, Kai, Nizzetto, Luca
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3028038
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.127232
Description
Summary:Embargo until September 17, 2023 Contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) are a focus in marine protection. Several CECs are released with wastewater effluents to coastal environments and their offshore occurrence has been recently documented. Routine monitoring is key for implementing marine protection acts, however infrastructural, financial, and technical limitations hinder this task along broad spatial transects. Here we show the efficacy of a new infrastructure enabling unmanned sampling of surface water from ships of opportunity in providing reliable and cost-effective routine monitoring of CECs along a Europe-Arctic transect. The distribution and long-range transport of several pharmaceuticals and personal care products, artificial food additives, and stimulants were assessed. Validation of operations through strict procedural and analytical quality criteria is presented. A framework to estimate a compound-specific spatial range (SR) index of marine long-range transport based on monitoring results and information on source spatial distribution, is introduced. Estimated SR values ranged 50–350 km depending on compound, yielding a ranking of long-range transport potential which reflected expectations based on degradation half-lives. SR values were used to calculate prior maps of detection probability that can be used to plan future routine monitoring in the region. acceptedVersion