Review of Environmental and Human Exposure to Persistent Organic Pollutants

Abstract

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) have a very long life and they persist in the environment for a very long time and have a long life in soils, sediments, air or biota. There has been a recent upsurge of interest in the development of low cost reliable measures which are required in order to detect and trace current concentration levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) as a result of increasing levels of accumulation within the living organism, transformation as well as toxicity making it ideal to examine the impact on the environment which has been the focus of this review. There are still debates that rage around the issue including relevance of some physio pathologic effects of POPs on the human body along with epidemiological and clinical effects on the human population. Hence in this review there is examination, debating and presenting of arguments in relation to the sources, properties and types of POPs in the atmosphere along with examining the toxicity, analytical techniques and monitoring of atmospheric and biological concentration of POPs in the human population.