Anna Sobek

My research is about organic contaminants. I am interested in how contaminants distribute in the environment, with emphasis on the aquatic environment, and how processes in the environment affect where contaminants end up and what risk they pose to organisms and ecosystems. Much of my research therefore bridges between environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology and biogeochemistry, and sometimes even environmental law and social sciences. I am interested in the organic carbon cycle and how it contributes to determine environmental fate and risk of hydrophobic organic contaminants. A recent example of this is the work we did to study how the origin of organic matter in Baltic Sea sediment affects the sediment sorption capacity of PCBs and PAHs, and thereby also the release of these chemicals to the water column.

In my research group we currently have several projects to study the effects of organic contaminant mixtures on various aquatic organisms by using passive dosing and the chemical activity concept.

We have projects to study processes that affect the release of contaminants from sediment to water and how to use passive samplers for improved risk assessment of contaminated sediments. In a collaborative project with researchers on hadal systems, we study the occurrence of organic contaminants in hadal trenches (the deepest parts of the global ocean). Here we are particularly interested in how degradation of organic matter in the trench affects storage of contaminants in these extreme places.

In our research we combine theory and methods from various disciplines. We work in the field, perform experiments in the lab, develop methods for chemical analysis and use literature surveys and apply models.