Estarreja has always been a region with extensive farming areas, developing parallel and competing for land with an important industrial pole - the Estarreja Chemical Complex (ECC). For decades, the different ECC industries disposed solid wastes directly on the permeable sands without any kind of containment or impermeabilization, and discharged liquid effluents directly on streams connected to the coastal lagoon, without any previous treatment. Nowadays, the increasing of environmental consciousness led to an improvement of waste management practices. Although there are still signs of long term soil and groundwater contamination and the extension and persistence of contaminants are not fully understood, in part due to geological features (unconsolidated detritic sedimentary rocks) that allows the contaminant’s dispersion and cause high aquifer vulnerability.

Pore waters are very specific solutions, generally with high concentrations due to the greater residence time than percolation waters, which promote a high water-soil interaction. For this reason these solutions are the transference medium for excellence of inorganic and organic compounds between soils and plants. In this sense, the study of pore waters can give valuable information about the mobility and bioavailabitity of contaminants for plants.

In this project we propose to study the influence of the agriculture practices in the contaminants mobilization, focusing in pilot contaminated areas of Estarreja, and using pore waters as a medium to study these processes, hoping to contribute with valuable information to improve de quality of agriculture practices in the reduction of contaminant’s exposure.

This project aims at assessing the accumulation of Hg (mercury) by woman living in the Aveiro district, and the potential maternal-fetal transfer during pregnancy. In addition to Hg measurements, related oxidative stress, neurotoxicity and DNA damage effects will be evaluated in both mother and baby tissues and blood. Although some epidemiological studies have already related Hg accumulation in several matrices regarding maternal-fetal transfer, only few studies have regarded this approach in Portugal, and none for the Aveiro district (which includes Estarreja). In addition, only few epidemiological studies have focused on genotoxicity to evaluate Hg exposure in humans. Therefore integrating biomarkers of exposure (Hg measures in maternal and fetal matrices) along with biomarkers of effects (e.g. oxidative stress and DNA damage) will improve the knowledge on the historical problem of Hg contamination in Aveiro region, along with the potential action from local authorities if results show concern to human health.

Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD) is an inflammatory disease characterized by progressive airflow obstruction and destruction of lung parenchyma that was the fifth most common cause of death worldwide in 2001, and that it expected to rise to 3rd place by 2030. Whereas tobacco smoking is regarded as the principal risk factor for the development of COPD, 25–45% of patients with COPD have never smoked.

Furthermore, recent studies showed that exposure to other environmental contaminants plays an important role in this disease, particularly in intensive and frequent exposure scenarios, such as occupational and indoor exposures. Thus, studies on the association between COPD and other risk factors are essential. In this line of thought several studies on the association of COPD and occupational exposures have been performed over the last years. However, household and indoor exposures did not receive the same degree of attention by the scientific community, even though most people tend to spend the vast majority of their time indoors (about 80%) and that 2/3 of that time is spent at home.Hence, studies on the distribution of environmental contaminants in the indoor environment alongside with studies on the levels of those contaminants in human samples are of great importance. With this project, levels of selected environmental contaminants (metals and organometals) will be assessed in environmental and biological samples obtained from volunteers (with and without COPD), their households and whenever possible their surroundings in order to unravel possible associations.

Our ultimate goal is to identify risks factors for the development and progression of COPD and ultimately to promote health.

OHM territories are concerned by present and past pollutions. Especially potentially harmful trace elements or trace metals (here called PHTE) could have been released through industrial and mining activities in OHM watersheds. Previous OHM projects have shown that human activities have released different PHTE in the watersheds of the OHMs Haut-Vicdessos and Estarreja. For example Pb was dispersed in the environment since the Antiquity and especially during the Middle Ages in the High Vicdessos area. In Estarreja, anthropogenic arsenic and mercury are found in soils and sediments (Inácio et al.,2014).

Unlike in the OHM-Haut Vicdessos, in the other OHM territories, the presence of well-preserved peat and lake records is not clear but the presence of wetlands with organic sediment accumulation is testified. This is the case of the OHM Estarreja with riverbanks and lagoons present in the complex lagoon system draining into the Ria.

Wetlands such as the ones of Estarreja and Haut Vicdessos are intrinsically linked to hydrology, which creates particular physico-chemical conditions that make them different from well-drained terrestrial or fully aquatic deepwater systems. Moreover, the ecological consequences of environmental changes in the watershed are largely dependent on changes in the hydrological regime (such as sea level rise, decreased surface area and fluctuations of ground water levels), as well as on water quality. Therefore, knowledge of background fluxes and concentrations of PHTE are of primordial importance to understand present concentrations and transfers of anthropogenic PHTE. But these transfers of PHTE are also conditioned by more extreme events such as hydrological transfers like floods or droughts that will have a huge impact on the PHTE concentrations released from the soils to the watersheds. It is well known that wetlands exposed to environmental contamination act as sink and sources of PHTE. Soil particles may act as important transporters of environmental pollutants due to the chemical-physical processes that PHTE undergo during cycles of transport and temporary deposition. Thus, the soil-sediment-water system is evolving now as it was in the past. To understand the biogeochemical cycling of the PHTE is therefore crucial for purpose of environmental risk assessment, for retro-observation analysis or for prediction of natural hazards.

But these types of wetlands can provide important archives of past environmental, climate, hydrologic and vegetation changes, For instance, studying the trace elemental composition or isotopic signatures of trace elements within a fish otolith gives insight to the water bodies fish have previously occupied. Climate changes and environmental stresses can be assessed through an understanding of changes in tree growth. Generally, trees respond to changes in environmental variables by speeding up or slowing down growth, which in turn is generally, reflected a greater or lesser thickness in growth rings. Different species, however, respond to changes in environmental variables in different ways.

Given the importance of such an important type of terrestrial environment, we are developing in the High Vicdessos area an innovative approach combining different high resolution environmental archives of past pollution in the watershed: peat and lake records. Whereas peat records are used as archives of pure atmospheric signals, lake sediments record signals from both the atmosphere and the catchment. Combining both archives allow us to decipher the origin of the metals and also the potential lag between atmospheric deposition and transfer to the watershed.

Another major advantage is that this approach gives us insights also on preindustrial and, if old enough, on prehistoric levels of pollution.

There is thus a need to develop new integrative tools and improve the existent ones to understand recent biogeochemical transfers in the critical zone of the territories of the OHM. For that purpose, annual environmental archives like fish otoliths and tree rings can be used to understand recent transfers of PHTE in the environment.