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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Environmental pollutants have gathered in the deepest parts [bbc.com] of Earth's oceans:

Chemicals banned in the 1970s have been found in the deepest reaches of the Pacific Ocean, a new study shows. Scientists were surprised by the relatively high concentrations of pollutants like PCBs and PBDEs in deep sea ecosystems. Used widely during much of the 20th Century, these chemicals were later found to be toxic and to build up in the environment.

[...] The team led by Dr Alan Jamieson at the University of Newcastle sampled levels of pollutants in the fatty tissue of amphipods (a type of crustacean) from deep below the Pacific Ocean surface. The animals were retrieved using specially designed "lander" vehicles deployed from a boat over the Mariana and Kermadec trenches, which are over 10km deep and separated from each other by 7,000km.

[...] In their paper, the authors say it can be difficult to place the levels of contamination found below the Pacific into a wider context - in part because previous studies of contamination gathered measurements in different ways. But they add that in the Mariana trench, the highest levels of PCBs were 50 times greater than in crabs from paddy fields fed by the Liaohe River, one of the most polluted rivers in China. Dr Jamieson commented: "The amphipods we sampled contained levels of contamination similar to that found in Suruga Bay [in Japan], one of the most polluted industrial zones of the northwest Pacific."

Also at Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], USA Today [usatoday.com], and KUNC (NPR) [kunc.org].

Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna [nature.com] (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-016-0051) (DX [doi.org])

Original Submission