The World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations report that the prevalence of human diseases during the past decade is rapidly increasing. Population growth and the pollution of water, air, and soil are contributing to the increasing number of human diseases worldwide. Currently an estimated 40% of world deaths are due to environmental degradation. The ecology of increasing diseases has complex factors of environmental degradation, population growth, and the current malnutrition of about 3.7 billion people in the world.

[1] Brominated very short-lived substances (VSLSs) such as bromoform (CHBr 3 ), dibromomethane (CH 2 Br 2 ), and chlorodibromomethane (CHClBr 2 ) are receiving increasing attention, due to their important role in tropospheric and lower stratospheric ozone (O 3 ) chemistry. These brominated VSLSs were measured in air and surface water during the Gulf of Mexico and East Coast Carbon (GOMECC) cruise in the summer of 2007. Mean atmospheric mixing ratios for CHBr 3 , CH 2 Br 2 and CHClBr 2 for the entire cruise were 14.6 (0.7 to 138.3) ppt, 2.8 (0.5 to 13.2) ppt, and 0.5 (0.03 to 3.2) ppt, respectively; and mean sea-surface water concentrations were 66.0 (4.4 to 1724.8) pmol L −1 , 10.6 (1.9 to 153.8) pmol L −1 , and 1.0 (0.1 to 17.2) pmol L −1 , respectively. These compounds were supersaturated almost everywhere in the study region, except a few locations in the Florida Straits and along the east coast of Florida, where negative saturation anomalies and fluxes were observed. Mean net fluxes observed during the GOMECC cruise for CHBr 3 , CH 2 Br 2 , and CHClBr 2 were 47.

Measurements of methyl bromide (CH3Br) and methyl chloride (CH3Cl) were made during the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast Carbon (GOMECC) cruise in the summer of 2007. This was the first large‐scale study of CH3Br and CH3Cl in the coastal ocean. The mean atmospheric mixing ratios were 10.1 ppt for CH3Br and 517 ppt for CH3Cl. Surface seawater concentrations ranged from 0.8 pM to 5.0 pM for CH3Br and from 61.5 pM to 179 pM for CH3Cl. Biological processes contribute to the elevated seawater concentrations of CH3Br, while a combination of biological processes and terrestrial sources may contribute to elevated seawater concentrations of CH3Cl. Vertical distributions show highest concentrations of CH3Br and CH3Cl in the subsurface seawater below the mixed layer due to high degradation rates near the surface. Good correlation of the production rates between CH3Br and CH3Cl suggests they have some common sources in the coastal ocean. After excluding the open ocean points, annual coastal emissions in the studied region were 0.01–0.06 Gg yr−1 for CH3Br and 0.3–1.6 Gg yr−1 for CH3Cl. By simple extrapolation, the global coastal emissions were estimated at 0.5–3.6 Gg yr−1 for CH3Br and 19–98 Gg yr−1 for CH3Cl. Including the coastal ocean emissions of CH3Br and CH3Cl will increase the estimate of global oceanic emissions by 1%–9% and 1%–8%, respectively.

No abstract