Understanding exposure of wildlife to persistent pollutants in the UK and Antarctica

Persistent chemicals accumulate in the environment as long as they continue to be released and are transported to remote environments far from their manufacture and use. Their impacts are poorly
reversible even after regulatory action as concentrations take decades to decline. Pollution is recognised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services as a top five direct driver of biodiversity loss and previous experience has found that persistent organic pollutants can have major impacts. This is clearly evidenced by the experience with DDT in predatory birds and PCBs in cetaceans. As such, pollution undermines the ambitions of the Leaders Pledge for Nature, to which the UK is a signatory, to step up global ambition on biodiversity and the UK's 25 Year Environment Plan. The Leaders Pledge commits to meaningful action and to significantly reduce environmental pollution. To achieve this for persistent chemicals, regulatory action requires a strong evidence base to identify chemicals of concern and to understand environmental exposures and the risks they pose to wildlife.

This project will investigate exposure of wildlife across the food web to persistent chemicals close to source in the UK and in the Antarctic following their long range transport to this remote environment. It will generate data on their persistence, mobility, bioaccumulation, biomagnification through the food chain and long range transport to better understand the environmental exposure pathways of wildlife to chemicals and the impacts that they may have. This will generate key data to inform regulatory decision making, including in the Stockholm Convention for nominating new Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

An initial component of the project will be to undertake a literature review to identify chemicals of concern for targeted analysis. This will be combined with perspectives of government policy teams and regulators (Defra and the Environment Agency) involved in UK REACH and the Stockholm Convention (including the POPs Review Committee - POPRC) to define which chemicals will have the most regulatory relevance and where data will have the strongest pathway to impact. The project will require development of analytical methods to prepare complex biological samples (such as cetacean blubber) with support from the Cefas team, including through a laboratory placement. An additional placement with the Defra Persistent Organic Pollutants and Chemicals in Waste team is also foreseen to gain experience working in a policy environment and insight into multilateral environmental agreements.

These methods will then be applied to biological samples from the UK and Antarctica from the Cefas and British Antarctic Survey tissue archives and sampling teams. Tissues available from Cefas include cetaceans (mainly harbour porpoises) from the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme and fish. Samples available from the Antarctic include seabirds and penguins, fish, benthic invertebrates and zooplankton. Targeted analysis will be conducted on at least two trophic levels, including a high trophic level/top predator. Non targeted analysis will also be conducted at the highest trophic level to identify new bioaccumulative chemicals in the species where there is the highest chance of finding them. Antarctic biota samples will also allow us to conduct a cross ecosystem screen for selected chemicals covering primary producers, herbivores, predators and higher predators.

Finally the project will look to better understand environmental exposures by analysing environmental samples (water and air). If possible field work will be conducted in Antarctica in the final year through the British Antarctic Survey, deploying passive samplers to collect these samples, but this cannot be guaranteed. Alternative fieldwork in the UK, including through Cefas Research Vessel Cefas Endeavour may be considered.