Pollution Effects on Oceans and Marine Life

The IAEA helps its Member States use nuclear technologies to monitor pollution on land and in the sea. The IAEA Environment Laboratories use radioisotopes to track and trace the sources of pollutants and in that way help countries control their environmental impact. For example, the IAEA supported a study of the effects of trace amounts of cadmium (a toxic metal) on local fish and shellfish in Chile1. Experiments were designed to use the radiotracer cadmium-109 to measure how quickly the cadmium in mussels was released in order to understand the bioaccumulation of this hazardous metal.