Moving towards a clean, non-toxic marine environment. This EEA assessment report represents a first attempt to map contamination 'problem areas' and 'non-problem areas' at the scale of Europe's seas, while also exploring whether Europe has broken some of the trends for long established hazardous substances.
Consequently, the overarching aims of this report are:
1) to establish a baseline for 'non-problem' and 'problem' areas for contaminants across Europe's marine waters;
2) to present temporal trends in the concentration levels of selected contaminants;
3) to provide an indicator-based methodology for assessing contaminants across Europe's seas and, in the process, for highlighting data coverage and gaps;
4) to reflect upon the findings.
The assessment is based on publicly available monitoring data, primarily collected in the context of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
This publication is number one in a series of European Environment Agency (EEA) marine thematic reports covering a broad range of topics: (1) contaminants, (2) eutrophication, (3) marine biodiversity, (4) potential cumulative effects of multiple human pressures, (5) sustainable use, and (6) marine protected areas (MPAs). The seventh publication will be the second edition of the EEA Marine Messages report. Preparing these thematic assessments provided the marine input to The European environment – State and Outlook 2020, by the EEA.
More information you can find on: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/contaminants-in-europes-seas