An item on the BBC website is today reporting on high concentrations of pollutants found in the skin and body fat (blubber) of bottlenosed dolphins in the English Channel. You can access the report here. The BBC report is based on an article that has only very recently been published in the journal Scientific Reports. The full article jn Scientific Reports is attached to this blog.
The pollutants include the heavy metal mercury and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), persistent organic pollutants (POPs) posing a serious environmental threat to wildlife and humans. PCBs were banned in many developed countries in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e.40-50 years ago), but they have persisted in the environment since the ban. You can learn more about PCBs here. Other chemicals were also found, including the residues of pesticides, in what the authors of the article refer to as a “cocktail of pollutants”.
Unfortunately it is not uncommon to find high levels of harmful pollutants in marine life, including in the fish that we eat. One killer whale found dead off the coast of Scotland was discovered to have “shockingly high” levels of PCBs in its body fat, while the health benefits of consuming fish can be undermined by high concentrations of heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury, in the body fat of those same fish.
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