Long-term changes of mercury, lead and persistent organic pollutants in arctic environments

• Main Author: Lindeberg, Carola
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap 2007
• Subjects: Lake sediment; time trends; chlordane; hexachlorobenzene; mercury; lead; soil; climate changes; Arctic; Greenland; Sweden; Swedish mountains; PCB; PBDE; pesticides; Earth and Related Environmental Sciences; Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap; Kangerlussuaq; Arctic pollution
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-1060

The Arctic represents a huge area with poor infrastructure contributing to limited possibilities to establish monitoring and research programs. From the investigations that have been performed we know that the arctic environment is affected by anthropogenic emissions from lower latitudes, but knowledge about underlying transport processes, the arctic pollution extent and the rates of changes are limited. This is of particular concern since we are facing climate changes that will not only influence the pole-ward transport of pollutants, but also change conditions for the already accumulated pollutants in the arctic environment. In this thesis lake sediments and soil samples are used to study sub-arctic and arctic time trends and loads of PCBs, PBDE, pesticides, mercury and lead. The study sites are the area around Kangerlussuaq, located in western Greenland, and the Swedish mountains. The temporal trends for PCBs (69 congeners), PBDE (#47) and two pesticides (chlordane and hexachlorobenzene) are studied in seven surface lake sediment cores from Greenland. The concentrations of these persistent organic pollutants are one to two orders of magnitude lower compared to lake sediments from lower latitudes, but with temporal trends following emission and usage trends at lower altitudes, i.e., decreasing trends for PCBs, increasing for PBDE and no specific trends for the pesticides. A delayed deposition of the low-chlorinated PCBs compared to the high-chlorinated PCBs may support the hypothesis of ‘cold condensation’ and ‘global fractionation’ i.e., volatile compounds are fractionated during the pole-ward transport. For lead the concentration in three Greenland lake sediments is about 10 times lower than in sediments from industrial regions, but the past 200 years’ temporal trends follow emission trends in industrial regions. The mercury concentration and enrichment following the Industrial Revolution in the mid 19th century are in three lake sediments from Greenland and in twelve lake sediments from the Swedish ...