"Considerable amounts of man-made pollutants are transported from southern industrial sources into the Arctic. This air and ocean driven process have been discovered more than 100 years ago and, since then, investigated in many international research Projects. Similar processes can also be assumed for the southern hemisphere. Polar regions are, hence, known to act as chemical sink for selected anthropogenic pollutants for the planet. However, the currently observed, rapidly progressing environmental changes in the Polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic alike) and the associate temperature raise expected in the cryosphere may lead to remobilization of pollutant loads which were accumulated in the polar regions of the past decade. This will contribute to an increased pollutant burden and mobility of these substances in the polar environments. This process and the associated consequences are discussed in this C&EN feature article."
- Roland Kallenborn, an organic analytical chemist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, UArctic Chair in Arctic Environmental Pollution Research.
Read the article here.