{"id":65366,"date":"2010-02-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-researcher-calls-for-global-effort-to-monitor-marine-pollutants\/"},"modified":"2010-02-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T00:00:00","slug":"uri-researcher-calls-for-global-effort-to-monitor-marine-pollutants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/02\/uri-researcher-calls-for-global-effort-to-monitor-marine-pollutants\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 researcher calls for global effort to monitor marine pollutants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tRecommends inexpensive method to verify U.N. Stockholm Convention <\/p>\n


\n\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 February 8, 2010 \u2013 A 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher who studies chemical pollutants in the marine environment has called on colleagues around the world to establish a global monitoring network to verify that the chemicals banned by the United Nations in 2003 are no longer in use.<\/p>\n


\n\tRainer Lohmann, associate professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography, and colleague Derek Muir of Environment Canada made their call to action in the journal Environmental Science and Technology last week.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe U.N. Stockholm Convention banned the production and use of many chemical compounds, but it is very difficult to verify whether or not it is working,\u201d said Lohmann. <\/p>\n


\n\tThe Convention was driven by concerns about the risks to people and wildlife from organic pollutants that persist in the environment for long periods of time, accumulate in body tissues, and are prone to travel great distances in the air or water. Among them are what Lohmann called the \u201clegacy pollutants\u201d like PCBs, DDT, dioxins, and some insecticides, as well as newer chemical compounds like flame retardants, fluorinated compounds, and those used in some industrial processes. <\/p>\n


\nWhile atmospheric sampling is being conducted in some parts of the world to monitor the success of the chemical ban, Lohmann says that aquatic monitoring is even more important because most human and wildlife ingest the banned chemicals through the consumption of fish, shellfish and other marine organisms.<\/p>\n


\nLohmann and Muir recommend that the proposed marine pollutant monitoring program use a simple and inexpensive technology called polyethylene passive samplers to assess concentrations of banned chemicals in the world\u2019s oceans. The samplers are small sheets of a thin plastic material that are sold at most hardware stores as a painter\u2019s drop cloth. Chemical compounds that are dissolved in water become absorbed into the polyethylene, and chemical concentrations can be easily measured with a simple lab test.<\/p>\n


\nThe 溏心vlog免费B站 professor first tested the effectiveness of the polyethylene samplers in Boston Harbor, and in 2007 he published an award-winning paper on their use. The following year he was awarded a $300,000 grant from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to further study their effectiveness.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe passive samplers are cheap, they\u2019re easy to handle, and they can be deployed by non-scientists anywhere,\u201d Lohmann said. \u201cAnd if the international community agrees that this is the right approach, there is already a means in place to train people around the world to implement it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAssuming he can generate consensus for the idea among his scientific colleagues, Lohmann\u2019s next challenge will be to find a government agency to fund the training, deployment and analysis involved.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cNot only will this monitoring program help to verify the effectiveness of the Stockholm Convention, but it could also help us gain a better understanding of what happens to these compounds over time,\u201d Lohmann said. \u201cDo they remain in the oceans for decades, do they settle into the sediments and stay there, or do they break down in the sunlight? We don\u2019t really know as much as we should about their ultimate fate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recommends inexpensive method to verify U.N. Stockholm Convention NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 February 8, 2010 \u2013 A 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher who studies chemical pollutants in the marine environment has called on colleagues around the world to establish a global monitoring network to verify that the chemicals banned by the United Nations in 2003 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}