Global distillation  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump
to: navigation, search  Global distillation or the grasshopper
effect is the geochemical process by which certain chemicals,
most notably persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are
transported from warmer to colder regions of the Earth,
particularly the Poles and mountain tops. Global distillation
explains why relatively high concentrations of POPs have been
found in the Arctic environment and in the bodies of animals and
people who live there, even though most of the chemicals have
not been used in the region in appreciable amounts.[1]   The
global distillation process can be understood using the same
principles that explain distillations used to make liquor or
purify chemicals in a laboratory. In these processes, a
substance is vaporized at a relatively high temperature, and
then the vapor travels to an area of lower temperature where it
condenses. A similar phenomenon occurs on a global scale for
certain chemicals. When these chemicals are rele