Previous work has shown that certain parts of the Great Lakes region are polluted with Dechlorane Plus (DP), a highly chlorinated flame retardant that was used as a replacement for Dechlorane/Mirex. It was suspected that a source of DP to the environment might be its manufacturing facility located in the city of Niagara Falls, New York. To confirm this source location and to determine DP's spatial distribution, 26 tree bark samples were collected in triplicate from the northeastern United States, and the concentrations of DP and several brominated flame retardants (BFRs) were measured. Most concentrations of DP in tree bark were found to be much higher than those of the BFRs. The highest DP concentrations were > 100 ng g(-1) bark in the city of Niagara Falls, dropping rapidly width distance from the potential source. A simple one-dimensional, Gaussian diffusion model was used to explain the spatial distribution of DP and to locate the source. The calculated source location was < 7 km away from the DP manufacturing plant it! Niagara Falls, New York.

Previous research in the Taihu Lake Region (TLR) of China found high levels of atmospheric organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). To understand the sources and the environmental behaviors of these OCPs in the TLR, research on air-water gas exchange was performed in 2004. Hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs), DDT related compounds (DDTs), cis-chlordane (CC), trans-chlordane (TC), heptachlor (HEPT), and alpha-endosulfan in both air and water samples were analyzed, and air-water gas exchange fluxes of these compounds were calculated. The net volatilization flux of alpha-HCH was 58 ng m(-2) day(-1), suggesting that the residue of technical HCH in the lake sediment might have been an important source of alpha-HCH to the air of this region after the ban of technical HCH two decades ago. The main components of technical chlordane, TC, CC, and HEPT, each had net volatilization fluxes > 230 ng m(-2) day(-1), suggesting that waste discharge from manufacturing plants in the upper region was the main source of chlordane to the lake. Unlike alpha-HCH and chlordane, o,p'-DDT and alpha-endosulfan had net deposition fluxes, suggesting that these compounds were transported through the atmosphere from land sources and then deposited into the lake. The correlation between air concentrations and ambient air temperature indicated that the current sources of o,p'-DDT and alpha-endosulfan were from land; alpha-HCH and chlordane were mainly from the lake.