Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) as environmental risk factors in remote high-altitude ecosystems

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and their transformation products, are the most investigated organic environmental contaminants within the past five decades. Organochlorines have been found in virtually all environmental compartments on the globe. Severe environmental implications have been shown to be associated with the presence of the POP group of contaminants in the environment. However, in the late 1990s, Canadian scientists first pinpointed the implication of POPs for high-altitude environments in a comprehensive way (Blais et al., 1998, Nature 395, 585–588). Under certain meteorological and geographic conditions, high-altitude environments can serve as “cold condensers” for atmospheric POP loadings. Subsequent investigations in high-altitude environments in Asia, Europe, and North and South America have confirmed suspicions that high-altitude mountainous regions have the potential to serve as focus regions for POPs and even for nonpersistent, medium-lived contaminants, such as “currently used pesticides”, due to cold condensation and deposition in high altitudes. Although the presence and the altitude-dependent increase of POP levels in mountainous regions are confirmed by many international studies, the ecotoxicological consequences still remain largely unknown. At present, only a few studies have been published describing the biological effects in high-altitude environments due to increased POP exposure. Therefore, in this early stage of the international research effort on the ecotoxicological risk evaluation of persistent contaminants in high-altitude, pristine ecosystems, the present review intends to summarize the current state of research on POPs in high-altitude environments and draw preliminary conclusions on possible consequences of the presence of POPs in mountainous ecosystems based on currently available information from alpine and related Arctic environments.