Chemicals banned in 1970s discovered in deep ocean fauna

Chemicals banned in 1970s discovered in deep ocean fauna(पशुवर्ग)  In a first, scientists have found high levels of human-made pollutants, including chemicals that were banned in the 1970s, lingering in the tissues of marine creatures that dwell in the deepest oceans of the Earth. Sampling amphipods from the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana and Kermadec trenches(खाइयों) , which are over 10 km

deep and 7,000 km apart, researchers found extremely high levels of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the organism’s fatty tissue. These include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) which are commonly used as electrical insulators and flame retardants. “We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm(प्राचीन दायरे) , safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth,” said Alan Jamieson, from the Newcastle University, U.K.  “In fact, the amphipods we sampled contained levels of contamination similar to that found in Suruga Bay, one of the most polluted industrial zones of the north-west Pacific,” said Mr. Jamieson, who led the study.

From the 1930s to when PCBs were banned in the 1970s, the total global production of these chemicals was in the region of 1.3 million tonnes. Released into the environment through industrial accidents, these pollutants are invulnerable to natural degradation (अवनति) and so persist in the environment for decades. The team used deep-sea landers to plumb the depths of the Pacific Ocean in order to bring up samples of the organisms.

The pollutants may have found their way to the trenches through contaminated plastic debris (मलबा) and dead animals sinking to the bottom of the ocean, where they are then consumed by amphipods and other fauna, scientists believe. — PTI