PCB levels and trends within the Detroit River-Western Lake Erie basin: a historical perspective of ecosystem monitoring.

An international workshop held in the spring of 2002 convened a group of technical experts to address monitoring, modeling, and management of PCBs within the Detroit River-Western Lake Erie basin. Participants shared and discussed a diverse set of research data bases pertaining to PCB levels within the region, discussed observed changes within different components of the local ecosystem, and identified several primary issues impacting future PCB management strategies. Results presented at the workshop indicate dramatic reductions in PCB contamination levels have been observed in much of study area between the late 1970s and mid-1990s.

Ecological benefits of contaminated sediment remediation.

Contaminated sediment has been identified as a source of ecological impacts in marine and freshwater systems throughout the world, and the importance of the contaminated sediment management issue continues to increase in all industrialized countries. In many areas, dredging or removal of sediments contaminated with nutrients, metals, oxygen-demanding substances, and persistent toxic organic chemicals has been employed as a form of environmental remediation. In most situations, however, the documentation of the sediment problem has not been quantitatively coupled to ecological impairments.