The increasing worldwide exploitation of coastal areas poses serious environmental problems and requires science-based policy for a sustainable management of the marine ecosystems and resources. Knowledge on pollution levels and trends is essential to define environmental protection measures. However, data availability in coastal areas is still very uneven. In large areas of the world information is totally missing and, although monitoring programmes are being undertaken, very little is known on past contaminant levels and trends. The use of natural environmental archives (sediments, shells, corals, etc.) when properly dated by radioisotopic methods, may allow for defining the temporal variability and trend of the levels of a variety of contaminants  in the marine environment, complementing conventional monitoring programmes and/or reconstructing past environmental conditions when monitoring data is missing.   The aim of this CRP is to critically review the use of natural environmental archives to retrospectively investigate pollution trends in the marine environment and to show how the application of radioanalytical, isotopic and tracer techniques can contribute to provide an improved approach enabling to produce comprehensive data on the behaviiour of contaminants in coastal marine systems.