[Pharmwaste] Polar bears in remote north have high levels of toxic pollutants

[DeBiasi, Deborah (DEQ)]

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/905374--polar-bears-in-remote-north-have-high-levels-of-toxic-pollutants

Polar bears in remote north have high levels of toxic pollutants

Elizabeth Haggarty
 Toronto Star 
With its pristine-looking, snow-covered flats and mirror-like oceans that come with frigid temperatures and limited human exposure, the Arctic looks as clean as it could get, but it's not - nature's northern refuge is toxic.

In fact, the 2500 polar bears that roam Norway's remote Svalbard have some of the highest levels of toxic organic pollutants of any animal on the planet, professor Bjørn Munro Jenssen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found in his research.

"These contaminants are bio-accumulated and bio-magnified up the food chain," said Jenssen in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. "So the higher you are in the food chain, the higher are the contaminants."

And the contamination doesn't stop at polar bears, according to The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programs' (AMAP) annual Arctic Pollution report. Arctic foxes, mink, three species of whales, sledge dogs, Arctic sea birds and humans could be affected by high pollution levels.

Although mostly devoid of humans, the Arctic bears the brunt of much of our pollution, with industrial chemicals from Western Europe, North American and Asia swept into the region by air and ocean currents.

For the report, researchers examined Arctic data collected between 1997 and 2002 from research stations in Canada (Alert), Finland (Pallas), Iceland (Storhofdi) and Norway (Zeppelin).

And they found that while the amounts of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) such as PCBs, DDTs and toxaphene were declining, their effects on northern wildlife were not.

"Concentrations of POPs in some wildlife are still high enough to affect the health of several groups of animals, especially top predators in the marine food web," the report concluded.

Experiments on sledge dogs and Arctic foxes found that animals exposed to POPs experienced changes in their kidneys and thyroids that could affect temperature control, brain development and reproduction.

While researching the contamination levels in Arctic Seabirds, Jonathan Verreault of the Université du Québec à Montréal discovered that higher levels of Hg (a substance created from burning fossil fuels and waste incineration) were also found in some birds.

These higher levels of toxicity led to reports of changes in "hormones, metabolism, immunity, genetic regulation, reproduction, behaviour" in some Norwegian Arctic glaucous gull.

The Arctic Pollution report speculates that toxic levels could affect indigenous arctic populations:

"In light of current studies, many indigenous populations in the Arctic region have poorer health than national averages," the report said. "While socioeconomic conditions and lifestyle choices are major determinants of health, contaminants may also have a contributing effect." 

Since the Arctic is the meeting point for much of the world's pollution, studies of the area are used to monitor the effectiveness of emissions bans, such as the Stockholm Convention and pollution-curbing strategies.





Deborah L. DeBiasi 
Email:   Deborah.DeBiasi at deq.virginia.gov (NEW!)
WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov 
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality 
Office of Water Permit and Compliance Assistance Programs 
Industrial Pretreatment/Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) Program 
PPCPs, EDCs, and Microconstituents
www.deq.virginia.gov/vpdes/microconstituents.html 
Mail:          P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA  23218 
Location:  629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA  23219 
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