Manmade Persistent Organic Pollutants Found In Food Chains In Deepest Parts Of Ocean - ES&T

[hatrack]

Research published online May 22 in Marine Pollution Bulletin presents new evidence that human-made contaminants are finding their way into the deepest parts of the ocean. The paper is one of the first reports of persistent organic pollutant uptake by deep-sea mollusks, an important part of the marine food chain.

A team of researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) collected nine species of cephalopods, a class of organisms that includes octopods, squids, cuttlefish, and nautiluses, from depths between 1000 and 2000 meters (about 3300 to 6600 feet) in 2003 in the western North Atlantic Ocean. The team selected species for chemical analysis on the basis of their importance as prey and analyzed specimens for 11 classes of anthropogenic chemical contaminants. The compounds the researchers detected include DDT, PAHs, PCBs, PBDEs, tributyltin, and toxaphene.

“It was surprising to find measurable and sometimes high amounts of toxic pollutants in such a deep and remote environment,” says coauthor Michael Vecchione of NMFS.

Although scientists have previously looked for persistent organic pollutants in deep-sea fish, there is little information on such chemicals in deep-sea cephalopods. The large variety of contaminants that the scientists reported in the new paper makes it “apparent that contamination of the deep-sea oceanic food web is occurring,” they write.

EDIT

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/jun/science/kb_cephalopods.html

[MasonJar]

1. And man purports himself to be made in the image of God...when will

man wake up and do something to stop the rape of the planet? We are a scourge on the Earth.

[Triana]

6. we are a parasite. n/t

[phantom power]

2. Inability to build shells and skeletons will probably kill them first.

[Mabus]

3. We came from primordial soup

and now we're creating our own Frankenstein concoction.

[kestrel91316]

4. We seriously need to lose our love of STUFF: the cheap plastic junk and

semidisposable crap and convenient chemical concoctions that fill our lives.

In the book "Garbageland" the author refers to plastic as The Devil's Resin. I agree - plastic and all its cousins are more trouble than they are worth in most cases. And we made our deal with the devil when we got hooked on them.

[YankeyMCC]

5. k & r

This is exactly the kind of thing that scares me the most. It is good and right to explore the boundaries of knowledge but not to be so arrogant as to think we know enough about the complex universe to act with the carelessness we do...resulting in all this 'unexpected' contamination and influencing of the naturally developed cycles and processes of the underlying ecology.