ABSTRACT
Oceans have long been considered endless sinks where domestic and industrial wastes could be discarded. It is not surprising to now measure significant concentrations of such contaminants in the water, sediments and inhabitants of the marine environment. This is especially true for stable compounds, such as organochlorines, which often persist long after their production and use have been banned. Marine mammals, which are usually at the top of a complex food chain, often accumulate large amounts of those contaminants. Of special interest (because of their abundance and/or known toxicity) are organochlorines (PCBs, DDT, etc.), heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been found in marine mammal tissues worldwide, including Europe (Holden and Marsden, 1967; Reijnders, 1980; Baumann and Martinsen, 1983), North America (Gaskin et al., 1971; Addison et al., 1973; Muir et al., 1990), South America (Gaskin et al., 1974), Asia (Taruski et al., 1975), the Arctic (Addison and Smith, 1974; Born et al., 1981) and Antarctica (Sladen et al., 1966). Those studies demonstrated that pollution problems are now global, and that there are no more pristine environments. But the biological significance and potential health effects of these environmental contaminants still need to be addressed.
