Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

IPMS is a trade union representing scientists, engineers and other specialists in the Civil Service, Research Councils and other NDPBs and parts of the private sector. You wrote to John Monks of the TUC and TUC affiliates have been asked to respond direct to you.

We are very pleased that the RCEP is undertaking this study but we are concerned that you intend to exclude occupational exposure. There is a health and safety dimension for workers which ,in any case cannot easily be separated off from environmental impacts. So we would hope that you will reconsider that exclusion.

I am also enclosing for your information a list of what may be useful information for your study which is already held by NERC. In addition to the attached list the following two NERC websites may also be useful:

NERC URGENT http://urgent.nerc.ac.uk
NERC Environmental Diagnostics Programmes http://envdiag.ceh.ac.uk

I hope these comments are helpful.

Some relevant research sites and projects of the Natural Environment Research Council (source: IPMS NERC Branch Secretary, Dick Crofts)

Plymouth Marine Laboratory
http://www.pml.ac.uk/pml/core_strategic.htm
'Integrating Marine Pollution, Transport, Reactivity & Toxicity for Risk Assessment (IMPACT)' provides realistic fundamental explanations of how pollutants behave in and affect estuarine and coastal environments. New risk assessment tools are being developed.

Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory (DML)
http://www.nerc-oban.ac.uk/dml/
Microbial Ecology: This research programme is concerned with the ecology of micro-organisms in coastal and oceanic waters. Current activities include studies of the way in which micro-organisms influence carbon flow through marine ecosystems and respond to pollution. Such studies give a better understanding of the oceans role in global warming and help assess the impact of fish farming and sewage disposal on the coastal environment.

The Geochemistry Group at DML investigates geochemical processes within coastal and deep-ocean environments. The areas in which research has been undertaken, both national and international include, Scottish coastal areas (sea lochs), Hebridean Margin, Rockall Trough, North Sea, Baltic Sea, South West African Margin, Arabian Sea, and the South Pacific Ocean.

The main aim of the research is to determine past and present impacts of man on the marine environment and use the information obtained from these studies to predict future impacts.

To assess the impact of pollutant inputs over time it is essential to determine the rate at which the sediment is accumulating and also the rate at which a pollutant is being redistributed within the system. This is achieved by studying both the sediment and the interstitial water.

Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/index.htm
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/science_topics/pollution.htm
Pollution: The release to the environment of chemicals used in manufacture, transport, agriculture and households, is a post-industrial phenomenon that has grown more challenging with their increasing diversity and volume of use.

CEH Science aims to understand the processes and mechanisms by which pollutants enter the various environmental compartments, the nature of possible physical and biochemical transformations, transport and uptake mechanisms and the responses of biological receptors. The results of this research are targeted at the needs of risk assessment and the design of effective systems for monitoring present environmental states and predicting future changes.

British Antarctic Survey
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk

British Geological Survey
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/home.htm
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/scripts/programme/search_projects.cfm

Southampton Oceanographic Centre
http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk

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