SEA6 Technical Report: Contaminant Status of the Irish Sea

The 2005 Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA6 Technical Report on Contaminants reviews the contaminant status of the Irish Sea. The report, conducted for the UK Department of Trade and Industry, considers major contamination sources from offshore energy installations and compares them to riverine inputs. It also reviews the distribution of artificial radionuclides from Sellafield in seawater, sediment, and biota.

Use Cases

• Compare contamination sources from offshore oil and gas to riverine inputs based on the report's analysis of Liverpool Bay and Morecambe Bay.
• Model the distribution of artificial radionuclides in marine environments based on the review of Sellafield discharge data.
• Assess the relative environmental impact of shallow-water gas production platforms based on the comparison to the Southern North Sea.

Strengths

• Report provides a specific comparison, noting riverine inputs of contaminants are several orders of magnitude greater than offshore industry inputs in key bays.
• Analysis is contextualized within a formal government Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA6) framework.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• The primary data format is HTML, which may not be readily machine-readable for analysis.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service, originating from the UK Department of Trade and Industry (now Department of Energy and Climate Change).

Collection Method

Report compiled using data from monitoring programmes and specific studies.

Time Range

Report published in 2005; temporal coverage of underlying data is unspecified.

Freshness

Report is from 2005; last updated date is unknown.

Geography

Irish Sea, with specific focus on Liverpool Bay, Morecambe Bay, and the Cumbrian coast.