Organic pollutants in deep sea: Occurrence, fate, and ecological implications

•Polar organic pollutants intruded young deep water but was negligible in older.•Advection is a key contributor to the vertical influx of nonpolar organic pollutants.•Transport of nonpolar organic pollutants by microplastics had low desorption losses.•Steep morphologies facilitate the transport by oceanic currents of organic pollutants.•Passive sampling offers an opportunity to assess the impact of pollution on deep seas. The deep sea - an oceanic layer below 200 m depths – has important global biogeochemical and nutrient cycling functions. It also receives organic pollutants from anthropogenic sources, which threatens the ecological function of the deep sea. In this Review, critically examined data on the distribution of organic pollutants in the deep sea to outline the role of biogeochemical and geophysical factors on the global distribution and regional chemodynamics of organic pollutants in the deep sea. We found that the contribution of deep water formation to the influx of perfluorinated compounds reached a maximum, following peak emission, faster in young deep waters ( 100 years). For example, perfluorinated compounds had low concentrations (