EOARC

Emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) are manmade chemicals which have be-come significant concern and relevance for the environment and organism’s heathy. Although not yet on the list of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under scrutiny by Stockholm Convention, presently, EOCs attract more concerns on their occurrence and transport behaviors from the local sources to the remote regions. Once EOCs transported in the Polar Regions, cold conditions may decrease their volatility and slowdown their potential of degradation processes. In the Arctic, remobilization from repositories such as soil and snow has also been suggested as providing a secondary source of POPs to the atmosphere. Moreover, many of EOCs accumulate through food webs, resulting in elevated concentrations in marine mammals and increasing the exposure to organic contaminants for human beings living in the Arctic. This project is focused on studies of investigation and modeling spatial distribution and ocean currents transport for EOCs including halogenated flame retardants (HFRs), phthalate esters (PEs) and current use pesticides (CUP) from Atlantic to the Arctic. Data and feedback from this project may improve models to predict the environmental progression and assess the effect of climate change on multiphase interaction and remobilization of EOCs in the Arctic.