The delivery of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from snowpacks into Lake Hazen, located on Ellesmere Island (Nunavut, Canada) indicates that annual atmospheric deposition is a major source of PFAS that undergo complex cycling in the High Arctic. Perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCA) in snowpacks display odd-even concentration ratios characteristic of long-range atmospheric transport and oxidation of volatile precursors. This Dataset contains the concentrations of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Arctic water and snow for Lake Hazen. Snow samples were collected from 2013-2014, water samples were collected over a time span of 2012-2015.
Citation: MacInnis, J. J., Lehnherr, I., Muir, D., St Pierre, K. A., St Louis, V. L., Spencer, C., & De Silva, A. O. (2019). Fate and Transport of Perfluoroalkyl Substances from Snowpacks into a Lake in the High Arctic of Canada. Environmental science & technology, 53(18), 10753–10762. doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b03372
Supplemental Information:
The Northern Contaminants Program (NCP, http://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_7A463DBA.html) was established in 1991 in response to concerns about human exposure to elevated levels of contaminants in wildlife species that are important to the traditional diets of northern Aboriginal peoples. Early studies found a wide variety of substances, many of which had no Arctic or Canadian sources, but which were, nevertheless, reaching unexpectedly high levels in the Arctic ecosystem.
The Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN, https://www.ccin.ca/) and the Polar Data Catalogue (PDC, https://polardata.ca/) have been developed over the past two decades through collaborative partnerships between the University of Waterloo and numerous government, university, and private organizations to provide the data and information management infrastructure for the Canadian cryospheric community. The PDC is one of Canada’s primary online sources for data and information about the Arctic and is Canada's National Antarctica Data Centre.