Hope for Earth’s Waters: Environmental Toxin Bans Prove Effective

New data shows pollution in the North Sea has significantly decreased over the past four decades, thanks to legal bans on environmental toxins as well as the monitoring of compliance with the laws. 

90 different inorganic and organic pollutants in sediment cores from the North Sea were studied by scientists from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), the Helmholtz Center Hereon, and the German universities HAW Hamburg and RWTH Aachen University. These sediment cores serve as a valuable data source to researchers, as they are able to give evidence of historical emission trends and verify the effectiveness of environmental legislation. 

“Based on the samples, several pollution peaks with high concentrations of different pollutants could be detected in the sediment layers of the past hundred years,” scientists from the BSH explain. 

In a striking example, the sediment revealed that toxic organic chlorine compounds — known as polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs and which were commonly used as plasticizers in paints and sealants in the mid-90s — contamination was highest in the period just before its ban in 1979. This mounting evidence that bans on pollutants are effective is a glimmer of hope for Earth’s waters.