Contamination of the Caspian Sea ecosystem with organic pollutants

摘要

The Caspian Sea is known to be the largest inland reservoir of salted water in the world. The square of the sea is 378000 km~2. However there were no reliable studies of its contamination during 15 years. Our preliminary study showed that the levels of organochlorines in biota seriously decreased. Seventy-one samples of sediments were collected in October 2001 in the North part of the sea. US EPA method 8270 was used to analyze organic pollutants in the samples. Although the presence of all types of hazardous chemicals was checked, petroleum hydrocarbons and sulfur were the major ingredients. Since the amount of data was too large geo-informational approach was used for the development of the ecological maps of the Sea. The elaborated maps allowed to identify the main sources of penetration of organic pollutants into the sea.