Selected urban/industrially impacted sites were monitored in an attempt to examine the impacts of anthropogenic activities on aquatic environments and to combine these results with AQUA-GAPS for a global scale estimation. The present project was aimed at developing new monitoring technologies to detect POPs in marine water and to evaluate the air-sea exchange of organic contaminants. Thus, it was achieved, for the first time, the simultaneous deployment of two passive samplers (air- and sea-samplers) resulting in (1) the evaluation of the present state of POPs pollution in the water and in the air of the Southern European coast and (2) the simultaneous monitoring of air-sea exchange of organic contaminants. The selected sites for deployment were in the Western part of Black Sea and in the Northern Adriatic Sea. Deployment sites included the Port Operational Marine Observing System (POMOS) (st.Balchik) in Black Sea and the Meteoceanographic site (S1-GB) in Mediterranean Sea.  The concentrations of PAHs, PCBs, OCPs and PBDEs were measured in both air- and sea-passive samplers.