Long-Range Transport of Airborne Pollutants with Accumulation and Re-Emission Problems of Mercury and Chlorinated Hydrocarbons

In 1975 Kellogg, Cookley and Grams (1975) made a simple and instructive illustration of the distribution of air pollution to be expected on a worldwide basis by dispersing the Gross National Products (GNP) of the countries with the prevailing surface winds. Taking GNP as a measure of the total air pollution from a country and assuming a residence time of 5 days in the atmosphere, the result showed that the long-range transport of air pollutants on the northern hemisphere would largely be limited to midlatitudes and a few thousand kilometres beyond the industrialised areas. In the Arctic only local sources of air pollution would be of any concern.