Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the atmospheric boundary layer: Where do they go?
| When |
Feb 13, 2015
from 10:45 to 12:00 |
|---|---|
| Where | Centre Blaise Pascal |
| Attendees |
Javier Castro Jimenez |
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Thousands of organic substances are emitted to the atmosphere as consequence of diverse anthropogenic activities (e.g. industry, traffic, agriculture, etc.). A fraction of these chemicals, defined as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are of major concern due to their high toxicity and persistency, their bioaccumulative properties and their potential of contaminate environments very far from the sources through an mechanism of emission - long range atmospheric transport –deposition. Today, POPs are globally distributed in the planet, being the atmospheric transport the fastest and most efficient pathway. During this presentation, the most common experimental approaches to measure POPs atmospheric levels, such as high-volume active sampling and passive sampling techniques will be discussed. In addition, the most used experimental and modeling approaches to study their atmospheric transport and to quantify the deposition processes (i.e. dry/wet deposition and diffusive air-water exchange) will be presented and illustrated with cases studies. For example, land-based atmospheric measurements performed over sub-alpine lakes [1] and cruise measurements in the open Mediterranean Sea [2-3]. A final part of this talk is expected to be an interactive discussion on how some physical theoretical approaches and knowledge (e.g. particle turbulence flows studies) could help improving “real world” field measurements and model estimations.
[1] Castro-Jiménez et al., Atmospheric Environment 2012, 56, 194-202.
[2] Castro-Jiménez et al., Environmental Science and Technology 2010, 44, 5456-5463.
[3] Castro-Jiménez et al., Environmental Pollution 2012, 166, 40-47.