/ 1 January 2002

Man-made toxins threaten Arctic people, wildlife

Man-made toxins that build up in the food chain pose a serious threat to the wildlife of the Arctic, as well as the indigenous people who depend on them, according to a report being released on Tuesday.

The toxins follow air and water currents from as far away as Asia to the remote and fragile Arctic environments of North America, Greenland and the Svalbard islands north of Norway, said the report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, which is based in Norway.

”Inuit in Greenland and Canada have among the world’s highest exposures to certain toxic chemicals as a result of long-range transport,” said a news release about the report, called Arctic Pollution 2002. Full details from the report were being released at a conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, later on Tuesday.

The toxins, including potentially cancer-causing PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, build up in the food chain, especially in fatty tissue like blubber, a key part of the diet for polar bears and the Inuit, indigenous people of the Arctic.

”Those at the top of the food chain are hit hardest, and those are polar bears and humans,” said Samantha Smith, director of World Wildlife Fund’s International Arctic Program. The WWF has endorsed the study.

”Most of these chemicals come from outside the Arctic, including the southern hemisphere, and are carried to the Arctic by wind and water currents,” she said. ”Without a global ban, we can’t protect indigenous peoples and wildlife in the Arctic.”

In a separate study, female polar bears with both male and female sexual organs were discovered in 1997 on Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago, some 500 kilometres north of the Norwegian mainland. Researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute now believe the deformity can be due to PCBs and other toxins. Smith said by telephone that similar two-gender bears also have been found on Greenland.

The news release said Arctic fox, seals, killer whales, harbor porpoises and birds also suffer high levels of contamination by persistent organic pollutants that damage the nervous system, development and reproduction.

PCBs are chemical compounds once widely used in plastics and electrical insulation. It can take decades for them to break down. Their use is now largely banned in the West.

The news release also said levels of organic mercury, which can harm health or even cause death, had risen alarmingly, partly due to increased burning of coal in Southeast Asia.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia, expressed concern about the report’s findings and called on Arctic governments to work together to help protect the health and lifestyles of indigenous people. – Sapa-AP