Pollutants Banned for Over 30 Years Linger in UK Rivers – Our Wildlife is the Evidence

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Pollutants banned for over 30 years linger in UK rivers - our wildlife is the evidence:

Banned and disused chemicals from our more industrial past continue to poison wildlife in rivers throughout the UK. But since these pollutants tend to exist in low concentrations in water and sediments, their modern influence is somewhat hidden. Animals accumulate chemicals over longer periods of time though, and in new research, we've discovered how these toxic relics are funneled through food chains to contaminate entire ecosystems.

[...] Pollution in many UK rivers decreased from the late 1970s and early 1980s onwards thanks to improvements in waste treatment and regulation of toxic chemicals. Initially, biodiversity recovered and river birds like the dipper returned to urban streams as their prey of fish and aquatic insects rebounded.

But improvements weren't universal or long-lived. Recent assessments found that only 14% of English rivers have a good ecological status, with conditions only slightly different from those that would be expected with no human disturbance. None of these rivers had sufficiently low levels of chemical pollution to be granted good chemical status. The situation was slightly better in Wales and Scotland, although conditions in these rivers were also well below targets.

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