Projects
On-going projects
Project partner: BAFU (Federal Office for the Environment)
Mercury is a heavy metal of particular concern due to its ability to accumulate in ecosystems, and its significant negative effects on human health and the environment. Major anthropogenic releases of mercury to the environment result from atmospheric emissions by combustion processes; mainly coal burning and metallurgic processes. Due to its high vapor pressure and its long residence time, gaseous elemental mercury, Hg(0) undergoes long-range atmospheric transport and is thus present globally [1]. To contribute to the understanding of the atmospheric transport of mercury, a long-term monitoring campaign for gaseous elemental mercury was started in 2011 at the High Alpine Research Station Jungfraujoch (3580 m.a.s.l.) in the Swiss Alps in the center of Europe. Additional mercury measurements in Zurich, with the aim to study local emissions started in December 2013. Gaseous elemental mercury analyzers are used to measure the concentration of Hg(0) by cold vapor atomic fluorescence spectroscopy for both locations.
Modeling the Sources, Environmental Transport and Fate of Poly- and Perfluorinated (PFASs) Alkyl Substances in Switzerland and Globally
The object of this project is to investigate the environmental behavior of PFASs by using modeling technique to interpret monitoring data describing levels in Switzerland, and second, to extend previous knowledge on modeling the global-scale dynamics of PFASs.
Dr. Zhanyun Wang, Prof. Matthew MacLeod, Prof. Martin Scheringer
Up to the mid-90s, indoor residual spraying of DDT has been applied for malaria vector control (combat of Anopheles sp.) in the Madeira River Basin, Amazon, Brazil. Recent experimental studies showed that DDT (bio)accumulated in soils, fish and mother’s milk. Considering the traditional high fish consumption of the local riparian population and the prolonged time of nursing (up to a child’s age of 2–3 years), severe health effects, particularly in children, may result. The pathways of DDT in the environment, biota and humans under the tropical conditions of the Madeira River Basin is to be described by means of a series of models: an environmental box model, a fish bioaccumulation model and, finally, a human pharmacokinetic model, which is to help assess the risk to the health of the local population.
Annelle Mendez, Prof. Carla Ng
New environmental fate models are developed to predict the behavior and environmental distribution of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) and enable a proactive risk assessment of these new materials. On the basis of established multimedia box models for organic pollutants, new process descriptions are developed to account for the specific properties of ENPs. A special focus is set on processes such as homo- and heteroaggregation and surface transformation.
Completed projects
Release of POPs from Alpine glaciers
Christine Steinlin, Christian Bogdal, Martin Scheringer, Konrad Hungerbühler (ETH Zurich),
Pavlina Pavlova, Peter Schmid (Empa),
Flavio Anselmetti (Univ. Bern),
Martin Lüthi (Univ. Zurich), Martin Funk (ETH Zurich),
Margit Schwikowski (PSI)
Abstract
In this interdisciplinary project we investigate the release of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from melting Alpine glaciers. Firstly, we could show that due to global warming melting glaciers represent a secondary source for POPs. Secondly, we investigated the delay between initial incorporation of POPs into glaciers and their release from the ice. Currently we are analyzing the transport processes of POPs within Alpine glaciers.
Project description
The “glacier hypothesis”. Mountainous regions such as the Alps represent a “cold trap” for atmospherically derived persistent organic pollutants (POPs) emitted in urbanized areas, due to the prevailing cold temperatures in combination with high precipitation rates. The awareness of the ubiquity of POPs such as dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and chlorinated pesticides in high-altitude regions and their conservation over long time periods leads to the hypothesis that melting Alpine glaciers may represent a secondary source of these “legacy pollutants”. Thus, POPs that were previously deposited to and incorporated into glaciers can now be released to the environment due to the rapid melting of glaciers.
Confirmation. Sediments of proglacial lakes, which form efficient traps of glacially derived particles, provide ideal environmental archives of pollutants associated with particles. In annually layered sediment cores of proglacial Alpine lakes, we reconstruct time series of POPs, for which environmental contamination in Switzerland has significantly decreased during the last decades. Investigated lakes include Lej da la Tscheppa in the Upper Engadine, as well as Oberaarsee and Steinsee in the Bernese Oberland. As a high-altitude and non-glacial reference lake, Engstlensee in the Bernese Oberland is considered. These studies reveal a first peak of persistent chemicals in the 1960s-1970s, which can be attributed to their use and emissions at that time. Since the late 1990s input of pollutants into the glacier-fed lakes has sharply increased again, confirming the glacier hypothesis.
Process understanding. Currently we study the processes governing the transport of POPs through Alpine glaciers. We investigate the deposition on, the incorporation into, the transport within and the release from Alpine glaciers by a combination of chemical multimedia models and glacier models. First mass balance calculations reveal that the release of POPs from melting Alpine glaciers largely accounts for the observed increase of concentrations in sediment from proglacial lakes. These model calculations further support the glacier hypothesis. Moreover, we can track pollutant trajectories within Alpine glaciers and determine the temporal delay between initial deposition of pollutants in remote Alpine sites and their release from glaciers.
Project partners
This interdisciplinary project is a close collaboration between different research teams covering complementary scientific fields. Involved groups include:
Safety and Environmental Technology Group at ETH Zurich, Laboratory for Analytical Chemistry at Empa, Sedimentology Group at Eawag, Laboratory for Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH Zurich, Laboratory for Radiochemistry and Environmental Chemistry at PSI
Publications
Steinlin, C., Bogdal, C., Lüthi, M.P., Pavlova, P.A., Schwikowski, M., Zennegg, M., Schmid, P., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., A Temperate Alpine Glacier as a Reservoir of Polychlorinated Biphenyls: Model Results of Incorporation, Transport, and Release. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2016, 50, 5572-5579.
Pavlova, P.A., Zennegg, M., Anselmetti, F.S., Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Steinlin, C., Jäggi, M., Schwikowski, M., Release of PCBs from Silvretta glacier (Switzerland) investigated in lake sediments and meltwater. external pageEnviron. Sci. Pollut. R. 2016, 23, 10308-10316.
Pavlova, P.A., Jenk, T.M., Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Steinlin, C., Schwikowski, M., Polychlorinated Biphenyls in a Temperate Alpine Glacier: 1. Effect of Percolating Meltwater on their Distribution in Glacier Ice. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 14085-14091.
Steinlin, C., Bogdal, C., Pavlova, P.A., Schwikowski, M., Luethi, M.P., Scheringer, M., Schmid, P., Hungerbuehler, K., Polychlorinated Biphenyls in a Temperate Alpine Glacier: 2. Model Results of Chemical Fate Processes. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 14092-14100.
Pavlova, P.A., Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Steinlin, C., Jenk, T., Schwikowski, M., Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Glaciers. 1. Deposition History from an Alpine Ice Core, external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 7842-7848.
Steinlin, C., Bogdal, C., Scheringer, M., Pavlova, P.A., Schwikoswki, M., Schmid, P., Hungerbühler, K., Polychlorinated biphenyls in glaciers. 2. Model results of deposition and incorporation processes, external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 7849-7857.
Pavlova, P.A., Schmid, P., Zennegg, M., Bogdal, C., Schwikowski, M., Trace analysis of hydrophobic micropollutants in aqueous samples using trap capillaries, external pageChemosphere 2014, 106, 51-56.
Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Blüthgen, N., Anselmetti, F.S., POPs – A haunting legacy. Highlights in Analytical Chemistry, external pageChimia 2012, 66, 644-644.
Bogdal, C., Schmid, P., Blüthgen, N., Anselmetti, F.S., Gletscher als Speicher und Quellen von langlebigen Schadstoffen. external pageKorrespondenz Wasserwirtschaft, 2011, 2, 80-84.
Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Blüthgen, N., Anselmetti, F.S., Zwyssig, A., Hungerbühler, K., The missing piece: sediment records in remote mountain lakes confirm glaciers being secondary sources of persistent organic pollutants. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol., 2011, 45, 203-208.
Bogdal, C.; Nikolic, D.; Lüthi, M.; Schenker, U.; Scheringer, M.; Hungerbühler, K., Release of legacy pollutants from melting glaciers: model evidence and conceptual understanding. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 4063–4069.
Bogdal, C.; Schmid, P.; Anselmetti, F.S.; Scheringer, M., See-Sedimente als Zeugen der Schadstoffbelastung. external pageNachrichten aus der Chemie 2010, 58, 561-564.
Bogdal, C.; Schmid, P.; Zennegg, M.; Anselmetti, F. S.; Scheringer, M.; Hungerbühler, K., Blast from the past: Melting glaciers as a relevant source for persistent organic pollutants. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 8173–8177.
Blüthgen N., Reconstruction of historical inputs of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in remote Alpine lakes in Switzerland. Master Thesis, external pageUniversity of Zurich, 2009.
Sources, fate, and mass balance of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in Switzerland
Juliane Glüge, Christian Bogdal, Martin Scheringer, Konrad Hungerbühler
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) represent environmental contaminants of particular concern because they can seriously threaten human health and the environment. POPs are recalcitrant to degradation, accumulate in human and animal tissue, biomagnify along food chains, and undergo long-range atmospheric transport. Although POPs are regulated by national and international regulations, many of these chemicals are still ubiquitously present in the technosphere and in the environment. For instance, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been extensively used some decades ago in diverse and long-lived applications such as in electronics or in joint sealants in buildings. Some other unintentionally formed chemicals such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) are still emitted in smaller amounts by combustion and industrial processes. Thus, primary emissions of these regulated chemicals have certainly decreased in Switzerland and other industrialized countries. However, the ongoing presence of POPs in former applications and continuing emissions represent major knowledge gaps. Current primary emissions of POPs, remaining reservoirs in former POP-applications, relevance of secondary sources compared to primary sources, mass fluxes between environmental reservoirs and amounts stored in these reservoirs (air, soil, water), as well as relevance of recently discovered POP-sources (for instance melting glaciers, see GlazioPOP), are issues we investigate within this project.
Next to “legacy” chemicals with established regulations, we investigate some “emerging” chemicals that have hardly been investigated so far. Of particular interest are chlorinated n-alkanes (commonly referred to as chlorinated paraffins CPs), which are produced and used today in very large amounts in several technical applications. Because of the ongoing and very diverse use of CPs, their emissions and mass fluxes are of high importance in the current discussions about the necessity to regulate CPs.
We focus this study on Switzerland as a model for an industrialized country with well established regulations on the use and recycling of chemicals, but, with an appreciable consumption of industrial chemicals. SwissPOP is founded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (external pageBAFU).
Publications
Bogdal, C., Niggeler, N., Glüge, J., Diefenbacher, P., Wächter, D., Hungerbühler, K., Temporal trends of chlorinated paraffins and polychlorinated biphenyls in Swiss soils. external pageEnviron. Pollut., 2016, in press.
Glüge, J., Wang, Z., Bogdal, C., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Global production, use, and emissions of short-chain chlorinated paraffins – A minimum scenario, external pageScience of the Total Environment, 2016, 573, 1132-1146.
Glüge, J., Bogdal, C., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., What determines PCB concentrations in soils in rural and urban areas? Insights from a multi-media fate model for Switzerland as a case study, external pageSci. Total Environ., 2016, 550, 1152-1162.
Glüge, J., Bogdal, C., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Atmospheric gas-particle partitioning versus gaseous/particle-bound deposition of SVOCs: Why they are not equivalent. external pageAtmos. Environ. 2015, 115, 317-324.
Glüge, J., Bogdal, C., Scheringer, M., Buser, A.M., Hungerbühler, K., Calculation of physicochemical properties for short- and medium-chain chlorinated paraffins, external pageJ. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data. 2013, 42.
Characterization of emissions and fate of persistent organic pollutants in urban areas
Pascal Diefenbacher,Christian Bogdal, Martin Scheringer, Konrad Hungerbühler (ETH Zurich)
Andreas Gerecke, Peter Schmid (EMPA)
A number of semi-volatile organic compounds widely used as additives in building materials have become of concern, because of their unintentional emissions into air and the resulting environmental ubiquity. Some of these additives belong to the hazardous class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), whose diffuse emissions in urban areas have been hardly investigated, partly due to the challenging and expensive nature of such investigations. To reduce this knowledge gap and prevent adverse health effects caused by hazardous chemicals, the CityPOP project has been launched.
CityPOP is a close collaboration between the Safety and Environmental Technology Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and the Laboratory for Analytical Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA). CityPOP investigates emissions of POPs from buildings into air in urban areas and is supported by the federal, cantonal, and municipal authorities. A selection of POPs is measured in ambient air in the city center of Zurich. Field data serve as input for chemical fate models. The main part of this project consists of measurements performed in the laboratories at EMPA, based on sample treatment and quantification with gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. In a second part of the project, the environmental fate modeling of POPs is performed at ETH Zurich.
Among POPs, several compound classes are in the main focus of CityPOP, in particular polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), chlorinated paraffins (CPs), and hexabromocyclododecanes (HBCDs).
References
Diefenbacher, P.S., Gerecke, A.C., Bogdal, C., Hungerbühler, K., Spatial distribution of atmospheric PCBs in Zurich, Switzerland: Do joint sealants still matter? external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol., 2016, 50, 232-239.
Diefenbacher, P.S., Bogdal, C., Gerecke, A.C., Glüge, J., Schmid, P., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Short-Chain Chlorinated Paraffins in Zurich, Switzerland – Atmospheric Concentrations and external pageEmissions, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 9778-9786.
Diefenbacher, P.S., Bogdal, C., Gerecke, A.C., Glüge, J., Schmid, P., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Emissions of polychlorinated biphenyls in Switzerland: A combination of long-term measurements and modeling. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 2199–2206.
Schmid, P., Bogdal, C., Wang, Z., Azara, V., Haag, R., von Arx, U., Releases of chlorobenzenes, chlorophenols and dioxins during fireworks, external pageChemosphere 2014, 114, 158-164.
Bogdal, C., Wang, Z., Buser, A.M. , Scheringer, M., Gerecke, A.C., Schmid, P., Müller, C.E., MacLeod, M., Hungerbühler, K., Emissions of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in Zurich, Switzerland, determined by a combination of measurements and modeling, external pageChemosphere 2014, 116, 15-23.
Bogdal, C., Müller, C., Buser, A.M., Wang, Z., Scheringer, M., Gerecke, A.C., Schmid, P., Zennegg, M., MacLeod, M., Hungerbühler, K., Emissions of polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans in 2010 and 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2014, 48, 482-490.
Buser, A.M., Bogdal, C., MacLeod, M., Scheringer, Emissions of decamethylcyclopentasiloxane from Chicago, external pageChemosphere, in press.
Buser, A.M., Kierkegaard, A., Bogdal, C., MacLeod, M., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Concentrations in ambient air and emissions of cyclic volatile methylsiloxanes in Zurich, Switzerland, external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47, 7045-7051.
Müller, C.E., Gerecke, A.C., Bogdal, C., Wang, Z., Scheringer, M., Hungerbühler, K., Atmospheric fate of poly- and perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs): I. Day–night patterns of air concentrations in summer in Zurich, Switzerland. external pageEnviron. Pollut. 2012, 169, 196-203.
Wang, Z., Scheringer, M., MacLeod, M., Bogdal, C., Müller, C.E., Gerecke, A.C., Hungerbühler, K., Atmospheric fate of poly- and perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs): II. Emission source strength in summer in Zurich, Switzerland. external pageEnviron. Pollut. 2012, 169, 204-209.
Moeckel, C., Gasic, B., MacLeod, M., Scheringer, M., Jones, K.C., Hungerbühler, K. Estimation of the source strength of polybrominated diphenyl ethers based on their diel variability in air in Zurich, Switzerland. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 4225-4231.
Gasic, B., Moeckel, C., MacLeod, M., Brunner, J., Scheringer, M., Jones, K.C., Hungerbühler, K. Measuring and modeling short-term variability of PCBs in air and characterization of urban source strength in Zurich, Switzerland. external pageEnviron. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 769-776.