Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in various food supplies have important health impacts, but are not as devastating as malnutrition and, perhaps, obesity. POPs should be controlled and the Stockholm Convention is having an accelerating effect on the global decline of POP manufacture and use. Reservoirs from previous misuses are much larger than current manufacture and efforts should be dire...

1 College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China 2Department of Environmental Chemistry, Institute of Analytical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Copenhagen University, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark 3 Research Center for Environmental Quality Control, Kyoto University, Otsu, Kyoto 520-0811, Japan 4 Institute of Biology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk 664003, ...

As top predators, marine mammals can provide information on the accumulation of anthropogenic toxins which present the greatest risk to consumers. We assessed the impacts of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on two cetacean species that feed on commercially important fi sh species in the eastern North Atlantic; the common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) and the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoen...

A series of siliceous adsorbents with chemically bonded phases (CBPs) of different polarity were tested as sorbents for trapping air pollutants (petroleum ether) using controlled setup. Moreover, special attention was paid to the potential role of metal impurities as strong adsorption sites. Sorbents were characterized by various physico-chemical methods, such as porosimetry, inductively couple...

It is not a point of debate that the Stockholm Convention for the prevention of further accumulation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) should be ratified and implemented by all countries. However, in their article, Schafer and Kegley present an unbalanced "worst case scenario". Approximately 20% of the food supply of the US is contaminated with POPs at extremely low levels; these levels a...

Organic compounds in domestic wastewater have a highly differentiated composition, which depends on the source of wastewater. Detailed fractionation of organic pollutants is indispensible to determine their transformation during treatment processes. Mathematical modeling requires the division of organic compounds in wastewater into the fractions: dissolved, suspended, biodegradable, and unbiode...

Genetically constructed microbial biosensors for measuring organic pollutants are mostly applied in aqueous samples. Unfortunately, the detection limit of most biosensors is insufficient to detect pollutants at low but environmentally relevant concentrations. However, organic pollutants with low levels of water solubility often have significant gas-water partitioning coefficients, which in prin...

Over the past few decades, scientists around the world have revealed the sinister impacts that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) could inflect on man and his environment. Growing interest in monitoring and managing POPs was building up at a worldwide level and Egypt was no exception. Egypt has ratified the Stockholm Convention for controlling the emission of POPs and had its National Impleme...

Clay minerals modified with organic ions, also known as organoclays, have found applications in a wide range of organic pollution control fields because of their excellent sorption capacity towards organic pollutants. Regeneration of the spent organoclays after the sorption of organic pollutants is of great importance during their application in pollution control. In this review, the reported m...

This chapter summarizes the current knowledge on the occurrence of common pollutants and pharmaceuticals in hospital effluents. These common pollutants include a myriad of biological, inorganic and organic pollutants. Daily and weekly concentration variability is presented for many of the covered pollutants. Particular attention is given to heavy metals (gadolinium and platinum) and pharmaceuti...