Ultimately, the impact of this work will be to influence policy in order to treat heavy metal contamination and to optimise management policy for arsenic and nuclear legacy materials.
Officials have been able to conclude that the dolphins' deaths were not due to lack of food, interaction with fisheries, poisoning with pesticides, biotoxin poisoning or contamination by heavy metals.
Environmental baselines to enable an assessment of the degree of contamination of soils and agricultural crops by heavy metals have not been established in the majority of African countries.
Shale-gas producers also face opposition from greens, who object to the industry's heavy water usage and a small risk that fracking could lead to contamination of aquifers and even to earthquakes.