Coupling marine monitoring and risk assessment by integrating exposure, bioaccumulation and effect studies: A case study using the contamination of organotin compounds in the Danish marine environment

This Ph.D. thesis focuses on the highly toxic organotin compounds, mainly tri-n-butyltin (TBT) but also triphenyltin (TPhT), which have been widely used as antifouling agents in ship paints, and covers several aspects investigated by field studies of spatial distributions, bioaccumulation and ecotoxicological effects in Danish and Greenlandic waters. The amount of field data (from own, national and regional studies and surveys) presented in this thesis has provided an
opportunity to integrate actual measured concentrations of contaminants with biological effect studies in a case study that couples marine monitoring and risk assessment for the organotin compounds. Thereby the thesis may also be seen as model for integrated risk assessment of other hazardous substances.