Testing for contaminants on marine animals in Scottish waters: EIR release

Information requested

“- What testing for contaminants has been done on marine animals in Scottish waters since 2020?
- What contaminants, including illegal drugs and legal medication, have been found in marine animals, as a result of these tests?
- What reporting has been done to Scottish Government ministers on these findings?

Please treat these three questions as three separate EIR requests.”

Response

We have treated each question above as a separate EIR request as per your request. For context, as our responses are published, please find the case reference number for each EIR request below:

EIR 202400412098 – Question 1 of 3 - What testing for contaminants has been done on marine animals in Scottish waters since 2020?
EIR 202400412543 – Question 2 of 3 - What contaminants, including illegal drugs and legal medication, have been found in marine animals, as a result of these tests?
EIR 202400412548 – Question 3 of 3 - What reporting has been done to Scottish Government ministers on these findings?

Response to your EIR request case reference number 202400412098

What testing for contaminants has been done on marine animals in Scottish waters since 2020?

The monitoring of hazardous substances (also called contaminants) in the Scottish marine environment is carried out by chemists from the Marine Directorate (MD). This monitoring is required to assess what measures and action are required in order to enable the Scottish vision of clean and safe seas to be delivered, but also to ensure that Scotland fulfils its part in international obligations to OSPAR (Oslo and Paris Convention), the UK Marine Strategy and the UK Water Framework Directive. Hazardous substances highlighted to be of particular concern and routinely monitored by the MD chemists include heavy metals (cadmium, mercury and lead), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These contaminants are measured in biota (mussels and fish) collected as part of the UK Clean Seas Environment Monitoring Programme (CSEMP) for 4 biogeographic regions: Irish Sea (Clyde and Solway), Minches and Western Scotland, Scottish Continental Shelf and Northern North Sea. Information you have requested related to the testing for contaminants in marine animals in Scottish waters can be found in the Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 specifically under (Hazardous substances and their effects | Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020).

We would like to advise you that the number of contaminant analyses (chemical methods) on marine animals carried out by chemists from the Marine Directorate since 2020 has been affected by Covid closures to laboratory buildings and storm damage to the main laboratories used for these methods. This has led to a pause in contaminant analysis work since part way through 2021 and is yet to resume. Contaminant analysis will restart once a full validation of these methods can be completed at the relocated laboratories.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs.

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we would like to advise that you contact the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and/or Food Standards Scotland (FSS) in case they hold any additional unpublished data you may be interested in related to testing on marine animals in Scottish waters:

• FSS have a dedicated Freedom of Information email address to use to contact them: openness@fss.scot.
• To submit a request for information to SEPA, please email their “Access to Information Service”: foi@sepa.org.uk.

There is a longstanding arrangement with the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science(CEFAS) to undertake persistent organic pollutant contaminant testing on harbour porpoise and a representative sample of other cetacean species as part of project with DEFRA. Data generated is made available in CEFAS reports and scientific publications.

Zoological Society of London (ZSL) undertake dolphin and harbour porpoise pollutants analysis funded under NERC ChemPOP grant. This tested for Chromium, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Selenium, Manganese, Iron, Mercury, Silver, and concentrations of each of the 25 PCB congeners. This data will be available on the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC).

Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) have developed a collaboration with the University of Aberdeen assessing mercury levels and results from this are included in the papers listed:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749123020298?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722084054?via%3Dihub
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c01881

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.