Sonesten, Lars
- Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Report2024
Inputs of hazardous substances to the Baltic Sea
Sonesten, Lars
Abstract
Excessive amounts of contaminants in the environment may lead to risk for biota including a risk for human health. Hazardous substances like metals and organic substances may originate from natural or anthropogenic sources, although organic contaminants tend to be more commonly of anthropogenic origin. The inputs to the Baltic Sea are considered to be mainly waterborne via rivers and direct point sources, and via atmospheric deposition, depending on the substance and data availability. The waterborne inputs of pollutants are monitored and reported according to the PLC-Water guidelines (HELCOM 2022a). The guidelines are most extensively elaborated for the nutrient inputs, but it also includes some metals. In contrast to the monitoring and reporting of waterborne pollutants, the programme for monitoring air pollution and precipitation, the airborne inputs include both metals and some organic contaminants. Due to this inconsistency between the monitoring and reporting of the different sources, fair estimates for the total inputs are at the moment only possible for some countries and for some metals that are included in both programmes. This assessment is focused on the inputs of the metals in the above-mentioned monitoring programmes. In addition, to the assessment of these metals also the atmospheric deposition of some selected organic contaminants commissioned by HELCOM to the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) has been included. These substances are benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (BDE-99), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB). EMEP has also evaluated the possibilities to model hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD), polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs) and pentachlorobenzene (PeCB), but concluded that presently the available information is not enough to be used for detailed deposition modelling (Gauss et al. 2022).
Published in
Baltic Sea Environment Proceedings
2024, number: 196
Publisher: Helsinki Commission – HELCOM
SLU Authors
Associated SLU-program
Coastal and sea areas
Non-toxic environment
Use of FOMA data
Global goals (SDG)
UKÄ Subject classification
Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources
Environmental Sciences
Geochemistry
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/130881