Contamination chimique du milieu marin : de la mesure à l'évaluation des risques

This activity report entitled (“Chemical contamination of the marine environment: from measurement to risk assessment”) summarizes the main stages my career at Ifremer from November 1975 to june 2013. The first chapter deals with the seawater chlorination and chlorinated waters released into the sea, the identification and the conditions of the formation of various by-product of these processes. The second chapter concerns PCBs, their nature, their chemical analysis in environmental matrices. PCBs are considered as the best examples of persistant and bioaccumulable compounds and therefore, in all this report they are flagship contaminants to which other groups of studied substances are compared. The third chapter refers to studies performed within marine pollution monitoring programme RNO (Réseau National d’Observation de la qualité de l’environnement marin - National observation network on the quality of the marine environnment) and well as other more limited studies like a first assessement on the presence of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs in the French coastal marine environment and last, on the use of zebra mussel (Dresseinia polymorpha) as sentinelle species of the chemical contamination in the Seine estuary. The next two chapters are about bioaccumulation and about the distribution of organic contaminants (PCBs, dioxins, PAHs, PBDEs) in marine organisms and in marine foodwebs. These studies aim at a better knowledge of the presence and fate of these compounds in fish and marine organisms eitheir in an environmental perspective (chapter IV) or in order to contribute to the assessment of their health impact, or more precisely to estimate therelative part of fish and seafood to the human exposure to chemical residues (chapter V). To conclude, the chapter VI concerns the PCB and dioxin fingerprints in the various studied marine matrices ; analytical and environmental interpretations of the observed differences are suggested as well as possible applications.