All environmental pollution, including emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), imposes costs on people who did not create the pollution. This is an example of an economic externality—a consequence or side effect of an action that is not experienced by the individual or entity from which it originates, and that is not reflected in prices. The damages and associated costs to society that GHGs cause...

This paper reports the reconstruction of the pollution history of 4-tert-octylphenol (OP) and 4-nonylphenol (NP) in the Baltic Sea. Alkylphenols are endocrine-disrupting compound and therefore toxic to aquatic organisms. Sediment cores were collected from regions with relatively stable sedimentation conditions. The cores were dated by the (210)Pb method. The OP and NP were determined using HPLC...

Antibiotic resistant and multiple-antibiotic resistant bacteria (MARB) have become increasingly widespread, primarily due to overuse of antibiotics in clinical therapeutics and in growth promotion for livestock. This undermines the usefulness of the drugs and presents a serious problem for human health. Compounding the problem, resistance determinants can spread between different bacteria via t...

OBJECTIVE To compare short-term effects of fine particles (PM2.5; aerodynamic diameter <2.5 µm) from different sources on the blood levels of markers of systemic inflammation. METHODS We followed a panel of 52 ischaemic heart disease patients from 15 November 2005 to 21 April 2006 with clinic visits in every second week in the city of Kotka, Finland, and determined nine inflammatory markers f...

Sea-Nine211 has been introduced as a new biocide in antifouling paints with an immediate degradation when it is released from ship hulls. The active component of Sea-Nine211 is 4,5-dichloro-2-n-octyl-isothiazoline-3-one (DCOI). In the present study, the toxicity of DCOI and the occurrence of Pollution Induced Community Tolerance (PICT) were tested in microcosms containing eutrophic coastal wate...

tailings in the deep ocean and their biological impacts is a signifi cant cause for concern.” The material can smother ecosystems at the disposal site, and if toxic metal ions are released into the water they may end up in the food web. The EU is currently producing new guidelines for best practice in the marine disposal of mining waste. On top of these legally permitted assaults on the oceans,...

In this paper, a review of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-based techniques, for oil slick at sea observation is proposed, focusing in particular on polarimetric approaches. In fact, marine oil pollution monitoring is a topic of great applicative and scientific relevance and in such a context, among all remote sensing sensors, SAR represents a fundamental tool due to its almost all-weather and a...

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as the generally agreed strategy for managing ecosystems, with humans as integral parts of the managed system. Human activities have substantial effects on marine ecosystems, through overfishing, eutrophication, toxic pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. It is important to advance the scientific knowledge of the cumulative, integrative...

During the last decades, marine pollution with anthropogenic litter has become a worldwide major environmental concern. Standardized monitoring of litter since 2001 on 78 beaches selected within the framework of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) has been used to identify temporal trends of marine litter. Based on statistical analyses ...

Eastern China has experienced severe and persistent winter haze episodes in recent years due to intensification of aerosol pollution. In addition to anthropogenic emissions, the winter aerosol pollution over eastern China is associated with unusual meteorological conditions, including weaker wind speeds. Here we show, based on model simulations, that during years with decreased wind speed, larg...