number of other methodologic approaches must be used (Patin, 1971; 

 Fontaine, 1972; Aubert, 1973; Patin et al., 1975). 



1.2 Basic Features and Trends in Pollution of Ecologic Zones of 

 the World Ocean . 



The flow of publications on the problem of chemical pollution of 

 the marine environment and hydrobionts in recent years has greatly 

 expanded and amounts to some thousands of articles; however, summary 

 works are rare (Goldberg, 1970, Marine Environmental Quality, 1971; 

 Mironov, 1972; Aubert, 1973; Nelson-Smith, 1973; Loranskiy et al . , 

 1975). In particular, we know of no description of the most general 

 regularities of the process of pollution of the seas and oceans in 

 relationship to the specifics of the biologic structure and biologic 

 production in the World Ocean. 



One interesting but as yet unrealized approach to the analysis of 

 the large-scale picture of distribution of man-made chemical products in 

 the ocean is the utilization of the extensive materials available on the 

 behavior and transfer of artificial radionuclides in the biosphere. If 

 we consider that the large-scale (background) pollution of the biosphere 

 is determined primarily by atmospheric transfer and fall-out of 

 pollutants from the atmosphere, it is difficult to find any other 

 precedent involving large-scale pollution of the biosphere in which 

 these processes would be more clearly and obviously reflected than in 

 the cases of distribution of the products of nuclear testing. The great 

 magnitude, scale and variety of studies on this problem, including 

 studies concerning artificial radioactivity of the marine environment 

 and organisms, are also without precedent. 



The existence of an atmospheric reservoir for the primary groups of 

 chemical toxicants and the magnitudes of the flows of these toxicants 

 into the World Ocean can be judged from the information presented in 

 Table 1, from which we can see that, with the exception of crude oil, 

 all of the polluting substances enter the World Ocean to a great extent 

 through the atmosphere. 



Each year, some S-IO^ t of fossil fuel is burned in the world, and 

 over lo" t of solid, vapor and gaseous compounds are emitted into the 

 atmosphere (Styrikovich, 1975). The existence of large-sale atmospheric 

 transfer of man-made substances from the land into the ocean is 

 indicated by the discovery of ash particles in the bottom sediment of 

 the open ocean and the accumulation of heavy metals in the glaciers of 

 Greenland (Bertine, Goldberg, 1971). 



Atmospheric aerosols and fall-out over the ocean have been found to 

 contain significant quantities of such products as DDT, polychlorinated 

 bi phenyls, mercury, lead, ash, in particles on the order of 1 m in 

 diameter, about the same size as the aerosol particles of radioactive 

 fission products, meaning that they can be carried by the atmosphere 

 over long distances from their source and can reach the upper layers of 

 the atmosphere. 



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