Contaminants Of The Great Lakes

This book reviews the globally important freshwater resource of the Great Lakes, which is currently threatened by contaminants that compromise water quality and impact its ecological and economic health. Divided into four parts, this volume covers historic, current and emerging sources of contamination from heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants to microplastics; and identifies their ecological impacts. Due to factors ranging from rapidly changing land use practices, climate change and our emerging understanding of their impact on biological, chemical and physical interactions, the effectiveness of management strategies has proven highly variable. Continued enhancements in the rate of lake recovery are required to sustain the health of the Great Lakes. Accordingly, the book also explores recent advances in contaminant detection, along with future steps forward in lake management approaches. Revealing our current knowledge gaps and providing a roadmap towards sustainable solutions, the book offers a valuable asset for scientists, managers and the public alike.

Pollution threatens the Laurentian Great Lakes and is a serious problem. This book examines what is known about the major classes of persistent toxic organic pollutants. Agricultural runoff, urban waste, industrial discharge, landfill leachate, and atmospheric deposition, are all to blame. Contamination of the various ecosystems is reviewed, and what is known about the effects of this pollution. This volume provides an invaluable resource for those in environmental research, measurements, and decision making concerning the Great Lakes.

Water quality concerns are not new to the Great Lakes. They emerged early in the 20th century, in 1909, and matured in 1972 and 1978. They remain a prominent part of today's conflicted politics and advancing industrial growth. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, became a model to the world for environmental management across an international boundary. Evolution of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement recounts this historic binational relationship, an agreement intended to protect the fragile Great Lakes. One strength of the agreement is its flexibility, which includes a requirement for periodic review that allows modification as problems are solved, conditions change, or scientific research reveals new problems. The first progress was made in the 1970s in the area of eutrophication, the process by which lakes gradually age, which normally takes thousands of years to progress, but is accelerated by modern water pollution. The binational agreement led to the successful lowering of phosphorus levels that saved Lake Erie and prevented accelerated eutrophication in the rest of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Another major success at the time was the identification and lowering of the levels of toxic contaminants that cause major threats to human and wildlife health, from accumulating PCBs and other persistent organic pollutants

In 1990, Congress amended the Great Lakes (GL) Critical Programs Act, also known as the Fed. Water Pollution Control Act, mandating that the EPA and the ATSDR and the GL states submit a research report assessing the harmful human health effects of water pollutants in the GL basin. ATSDR developed the GL Health Effects Research Strategy to identify human populations residing in the GL basin that may be at greater risk of exposure to chemical contaminants, and to help prevent any adverse health effects. This report provides insight into ATSDR efforts to assess the adverse effects of water pollutants in the GL system on the health of people in the GL states.

Chapters: historical overview; persistent toxic substances; pathways of exposure; a review of the Great Lakes (GL) human health literature; human health studies outside of the Great Lakes -- exposure to similar persistent toxic substances; limitations of human health studies; characterization of exposure and determination of the profiles and levels in human biologic tissues and fluids; identification of sensitive and specific human reproductive end points; determination of the short- and long-term risk(s) of adverse health effects in the children of exposed parents; and establishment of registries &/or surveillance cohorts in the GL. Illustrated.

This report contains a detailed review of the literature on contaminants, exposure, and health effects of those contaminants in the Great Lakes basin. The report is based on a series of papers prepared for the Great Lakes Health Effects Program, and is supplemented by additional data from related studies. After an introduction on health concerns in the basin and an overview of priority contaminants (organochlorines, metals, radionuclides, microbes, and airborne contaminants), further sections of the review cover the following topics: adverse health effects of persistent environmental contaminants in fish and wildlife; biomarkers for exposure and health effects; human exposure to chemical contaminants and their health effects; reproductive and developmental effects; neurotoxicity; immunotoxic effects; cancer incidence in the basin; health effects associated with radionuclides; Great Lakes water quality and effects associated with microbial contaminants; air quality and associated respiratory health effects; and overall conclusions.

This fact sheet describes the spatial & temporal concentration patterns of eight persistent toxic substances that historically have been reported to threaten or potentially threaten human health & aquatic life in the Great Lakes. These substances include hexachlorobenzene, organochlorine pesticides, octachlorostyrene, Mirex, polychlorinated biphenyls, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Ambient concentrations are also compared to water quality objectives.