UN Warns Climate-Driven Floods Resurface Deadly Chemicals
(MENAFN) The UN Environment Program (UNEP) has issued a stark warning that floods—becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change—are elevating the risk of hazardous, long-prohibited chemicals reentering ecosystems through polluted rivers, soils, and food supplies.
UNEP’s latest Frontiers 2025 report highlights four emerging environmental threats tied to climate change, spotlighting floods as a major factor in reactivating chemicals once considered securely buried. This resurgence poses fresh dangers to both human health and natural habitats.
According to the report, “Floods can bring such chemicals to the surface, after having accumulated in the sediment over centuries.” As floodwaters disturb contaminated sediments and debris, toxic pollutants are released and dispersed across farmland, urban zones, and freshwater systems.
Climate warming has driven an increase in extreme weather events, particularly devastating floods. The cryosphere—which includes glaciers, seasonal snow, sea ice, permafrost, and frozen landscapes—is projected to shrink drastically if global temperatures surpass 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This transformation may also revive ancient microorganisms, triggering alarms about antimicrobial resistance.
The report also flags the growing risks linked to aging dams, especially impacting indigenous populations and communities reliant on fishing. UNEP suggests that removing some dams may become essential to mitigate these threats.
Central to the findings is the fact that flooding revives the hazard posed by toxic substances that had been dormant and confined.
Markus Brinkmann, director of the Toxicology Centre at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of the report, told media that many chemicals at risk were banned decades ago due to their toxicity but persist in the environment.
“These chemicals do not disappear,” he said. “They are persistent — meaning there are very few degradation processes to break them down — and they are bioaccumulative, so they concentrate up the food chain.”
Brinkmann referenced the 2006 Stockholm Convention, which globally banned or phased out many of these harmful substances. “But they’re still around,” he noted. “They’ve been buried in low-lying bottom sediments — in rivers, landfills, contaminated sites — where high concentrations still exist.”
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