2022 ITOPF R&D Award winner, POLITE - Final study report available
21 January 2026
ITOPF is delighted to announce that the final report of the 2022 ITOPF R&D Award winning project: Photomodification Of Low sulfur fuel oils: Investigations of Toxic Effects (POLITE), produced by Huntsman Marine Science Centre (Canada), in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences (USA), has now been published on our website.
The study explored three key questions:
- How toxic are ULS/VLS fuel oils compared to conventional fuel oils?
- How does photomodification change toxicity?
- Can we effectively predict the toxicity of photomodified and non-photomodified ULS/VLS fuel oils?
The study addressed these questions by investigating the toxicity of these oils on American lobster, sea urchins and atlantic cod over two field seasons in Canada.
You can access the findings here:
The data generated through this project will support the development and validation of models designed to predict and assess the toxicity of these new-generation fuel oils.