Professor Emeritus Terry Frank Bidleman is awarded the 2025 European Chemical Society Division of Chemistry & the Environment (EuChemS-DCE) Career Award. He receives the prize for his groundbreaking research that has significantly increased our understanding of how persistent organic pollutants spread in nature.
Professor Bidleman has a long and successful career as a researcher. His research has mainly concerned how organic pollutants spread to polar regions, lakes, and seas. As early as 1988, he published the groundbreaking article "Atmospheric Processes", in which he describes how toxic compounds such as DDT and PCBs are transported as particles and vapours in the atmosphere and how they are deposited in lakes and oceans. The article made both researchers and policymakers understand the importance of the atmosphere in the dispersion of substances into the aquatic environment.
Today, Professor Bidleman investigates “Chemicals of Emerging Arctic Concern (CEACs)” in the northern Baltic and Arctic. CEACs comprise pollutant chemicals and some natural ones which have undesirable characteristics of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (PBT). A recent focus is on natural compounds which are produced in the marine and terrestrial environment and have PBT properties.
