ABSTRACT
The need to consider the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment is a characteristic that distinguishes environmental toxicology from human toxicology. In human toxicology, chemical structure and delivery form are typically controlled or can be deduced relatively easily. Many examples of chemical contaminants measured at some distance from the original source exist. In the case of advection, a chemical moves at the same velocity as the bulk flow of the media. From a modeling perspective, advection is described by the direction and magnitude of the media's velocity and diffusion/dispersion can be accounted for with Fickian mixing models. Transport in air provides an interesting and important example to expand upon since this is a primary mechanism through which global transport of contaminants occurs. Persistence has been defined as the residence time of a chemical in a specific environmental compartment.
