Severe Toxic Effects on Pelagic Copepods from Maritime Exhaust Gas Scrubber Effluents.

ABSTRACT: To reduce sulfur emission from global shipping, exhaust gas cleaning systems are increasingly being installed on board commercial ships. These so-called scrubbers extract SO_X by spraying water into the exhaust gas. An effluent is created which is either released directly to the sea (open-loop system) or treated to remove harmful substances before release (closed-loop system). We found severe toxic effects in the ubiquitous planktonic copepod Calanus helgolandicus of exposure to effluents from two closed-loop systems and one open-loop system on North Sea ships. The effluents contained high concentrations of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including alkylated PAHs. We observed significantly elevated mortality rates and impaired molting alrea

SUBMITTER: Thor P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8154367 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature