|
|
||
|
Search Archive | |
 |
 Courtesy of Karen Selleck Back to Chapter 5: Managing Risks Articles Preserving endangered night skies By Dan Duriscoe and Chadwick A. Moore Protecting American ginseng By Janet Rock Incident management team develops foot-and-mouth disease plans By Peter Dratch and Kris Fister An overview of invasive exotic plant management strategies in the Northeast By Kathleen Kodish Reeder Eradicating rats from Anacapa Island By Kate Faulkner, Gregg Howald, and Steve Ortega Other Developments Mosquito surveillance in the National Capital Region Battling alien fish in Yellowstone Lake Award-winner Profile - Hawaii Volcanoes resource manager honored |
 |
 Focus on toxic airborne pollutants In 2001 the National Park Service began a concerted effort to determine if toxic airborne pollutants are affecting park resources in the western United States. Pollutants of concern are “persistent organic pollutants” such as DDT, PCBs, and furans, and metals such as mercury. These pollutants can travel long distances (in some cases from Europe and Asia), persist in the environment for a long time, and tend to accumulate at higher levels of the food chain, causing toxic effects in fish, mammals, and humans who consume them. The NPS air toxics monitoring effort is a five-year process that began in 2001 with strategic planning and a pilot study. The next three years will focus on monitoring snow, lake sediments, plants, and fish or mammal tissue at six selected parks in Alaska and the western United States. The final year of the effort will focus on data analysis and reporting. Dixon Landers, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, is on loan to the NPS Air Resources Division to lead the project. The effort will involve coordination with a variety of groups, including the six focus parks, the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program, the Water Resources Division, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS, and others. |
|
This material is from Natural Resource Year in Review--2001, published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, in May 2001 (publication D-2255) /YearInReview/yir/yir2001/05_risks_05_od1_air_pollutants.html Last Updated: |