IS YOUR SUNSCREEN HARMING MARINE LIFE?

Is your sunscreen harming marine life? How are marine life affected by new chemicals? This is the topic of a large European collaborative project in which the Institute of Marine Research is central. The list of potentially harmful substances is uncomfortably long.

 Author: Øystein Rygg Haanæs

Researchers at HI and other institutions are now in the process of adding chemicals from sunscreen, textiles and make-up to sediment samples from European coastlines. The aim is to find out what effects the substances have on communities of tiny organisms on the seabed.

“Initially, we will test bottom samples from the Swedish west coast in the laboratory. Later, we will take samples in the Oslo Fjord, Liverpool Bay in the Irish Sea, southern parts of the North Sea and the Mediterranean.” says researcher Ketil Hylland at HI.

The experiments are part of the EU-funded research project CONTRAST, in which HI is one of ten European partners. In total, the researchers in the project will investigate the effects of new chemicals on everything from microorganisms and benthic animals to fish.

Must document scope and effects

“The goal of CONTRAST is to find out which new chemicals pose the greatest threat to marine life. We will document the extent of such chemicals in European sea areas and investigate how they affect individual species and ecosystems.” says Hylland.

The background to the project is that we are constantly using new chemical compounds in industry, cleaning, plant protection, skin care, medicine and agriculture.

Such substances have a tendency to end up in our waterways, either via sewage or through runoff from cities, industry and agriculture. Eventually they end up in the sea.

In English, the chemicals in question have been given the apt collective name “Chemicals of Emerging Concern” (CEC).

“We are talking partly about new chemicals that we suspect may be harmful, and partly about known chemicals that we have become increasingly concerned about the effects of.” says Hylland.

Many suspects on the list

The first challenge has been to find out which substances should be put under the microscope.

“Countless substances have been assessed based on many and very different criteria. How long does it take for nature to break them down? How fat-soluble are they? And those of us who work with toxins are naturally concerned about how harmful they are to living organisms.” says Hylland.

The result of the survey, which was led by the Belgian research institute ILVO, is a list of just over 60 chemicals.

Substances that are already regulated in legislation have not been included.

“The list includes some fluorine compounds that we have known about for a long time, and which we now see give cause for concern. They come from industry, technical clothing, oils, packaging and make-up, among other things.” says the researcher.

Other suspects on the list come from skin care products, UV filters in sunscreen, additives in plastic, insecticides and substances used as preservatives.

Do the chemicals affect biodiversity?

HI has the main responsibility for finding out how the substances of concern affect the diversity of living organisms in marine environments.

The researchers will look at the effects on species diversity both among algae and zooplankton in the water and in bacterial and meiofauna communities in the sediments.

The meiofauna consists of small animals – usually less than one millimetre – that live between the sand and clay grains in the sediments. They are an important link between bacteria, single-celled animals and larger organisms in the sediment.

“Some animal groups only exist as meiofauna.” explains Hylland, mentioning names such as gastropods and armoured worms, which are a type of tiny worms.

Reading the overall genetic imprint

The methods used are advanced.

“Among other things, what is called environmental DNA or e-DNA is analysed. Simply put, it is about reading the overall genetic fingerprint in, for example, sediment samples from the seabed. It tells us both which organisms are present, and to some extent how many of them there are.” explains Hylland.

Researchers at HI will also analyse fish blood and mussel blood (hemolymph) to find out whether the chemicals change the protein composition.

“Such analyses can help us find out whether substances can cause, for example, hormonal disruptions or weaken the immune system.” says Hylland.

Do the substances accumulate in the depths?

In 2025, experiments will be conducted at HI’s research station at Austevoll on the coast of Western Norway. The goal is to investigate the extent to which chemicals from the list affect organisms in deep water.

“We will find out whether any of these chemicals have effects on deep-water corals and deep-water mussels.” says Hylland.

Three deep-sea stations have been established in the project, and analyses of sediments from a joint European research expedition in 2023 and 2024 (TREC) are also being carried out. Samples were taken from the shore zone at 115 locations along Europe’s coastlines.

“Through CONTRAST, we are establishing a framework for assessing how chemicals that we do not know enough about today affect marine ecosystems. The goal is for the work to result in recommendations to the EU on the regulation of chemicals that may prove to be very harmful.” says Hylland.

More information about CONTRAST can be found on the project’s website

Source.