Research stations in Antarctica are sullying the pristine environment by improperly disposing of sewage waste, reports a study published this month in Polar Research.

Downtown McMurdo Station Image: Wikimedia Commons via Flickr

The study found that more than half of the research stations that operate on the continent lack sewage systems to properly treat and dispose of waste water. Fredrik Gröndahl of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, who led the study, said it should serve as a "wake-up call" to scientists working in the region. Twenty-eight countries have a total of total of 82 research stations in the Earth's southern-most landmass, and "they need to take action to prevent the release of microorganisms to the Antarctic environment," he told The Scientist. "This could be a big problem."

Explorers and scientists have been traveling to Antarctica for more than 100 years, and since 1959 it has been governed jointly by countries active in the region. It wasn't until 1998, when the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty entered into force, that people "started taking environmental issues on in a kind of more professional way," said Kevin Hughes of the British Antarctic Survey, who has served on Antarctica's committee for environmental protection.

The protocol mandates close monitoring of environmental impact, said Hughes, who reviewed Gröndahl's paper prior to publication, "and there we've fallen a bit short." Individual countries have been aware of problems at their own stations, but nobody had the complete picture. "What they've done is a very good review of the current status" of waste treatment, said Hughes.

Gröndahl and his colleagues sent out a survey in 2005 to all countries that operate Antarctic research stations requesting details of how each station disposed of its waste water -- from toilets, laundry machines, showers, cooking, etc. They received responses from 22 of the 28 countries, and found that of the 71 research stations those countries run, 52% lack any sewage system whatsoever. Forty-one of those stations are staffed all year round (rather than just in the summer or during special expeditions), and 37% of those also lack sewage systems. The survey also noted the need to assess how well the existing systems are working -- most sewage technology was developed for temperate climates, and may not be adaptable to the South Pole.

The survey cited previous studies that have examined such local effects. US-run McMurdo Station, for example -- the largest of the bunch with up to 1000 summertime residents -- had no sewage system until about 2003, and researchers have identified negative effects on microorganism communities in nearby McMurdo Sound.

Hughes noted, though, that although the survey points to an important problem, the situation may not be as dire as it suggests. Antarctica is a large landmass, about 1.5 times the size of the US, but its human population is just 4,000 in the summer, and a quarter of that at other times of the year. Though the effects on a local scale can be significant, he said, "any impacts are miniscule, continent-wide."

"There is certainly room for improvement," said Hughes, but he added that the picture is starting to change, with researchers getting increasingly serious about addressing such concerns. Still, he said, the solution is not always clear-cut, particularly at smaller stations. Installing a sewage system means hauling up a large amount of fuel, as well as employing a technician to run it. "You have to say to yourself, is the sewage produced by 20 people so bad that we really need to have these other environmental impacts to counter it?" The answer is especially ambiguous, he said, if that station "is right next door to a huge penguin colony or something, which produces enormous amounts of fecal matter."

There's also the cost. "It's phenomenally expensive to do anything down there," Hughes said. Not many respondents to the survey reported how much they paid for sewage systems, but the few who did allowed the researchers to make a rough estimate: installing a waste water treatment system for a station servicing 100 people cost countries about $240,000, with annual maintenance costs running between $800 and $9,500. "Of course there is extra costs," says Gröndahl. "But if we want to preserve Antarctica as pristine as possible, we need to take [on] the costs."


Related stories:

Icy treasure
[January 2009]

Hollywood in Antarctica
[17th October 2008]

Shielding from the storm
[January 2008]