This original draft (dated October, 18, 2000) is reprinted with permission
of the author. An edited version of this article appeared in the December
2000 issue of The Progressive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Trashing of the Arctic
Military Installations, Mines, and an
Atmospheric "Assembly Line" of Chemical Toxins
are Destroying the Inuits' Health, as well as
the Lives of the Animals on Which They Depend.
By Bruce E. Johansen
As we put our babies to our breasts we are feeding them a noxious,
toxic cocktail," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a 47-year-old
grandmother who is president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
"When women have to think twice about breast-feeding their babies,
surely that must be a wake-up call to the world."
Watt-Cloutier was raised in an Inuit community in remote
northern Quebec. Unknown to her at the time, toxic chemicals were
being absorbed by her body, and those of about 140,000 other
Inuits in Canada's Arctic. Watt-Cloutier now ranges between her
homeland, Montreal, and New York City, doing her best to alert the
world to the poisoning of her people.
Today [October 4, 2000] at Queen's University, New York City,
Watt-Cloutier is taking part in a press conference by telephone,
announcing, with ecologist Barry Commoner, that the lower-latitude
sources of Dioxins that are afflicting the Inuit can now be
identified. She can, for example, tell me, in Omaha, that one of
the principal sources has been a cement plant in nearby Ash Grove,
Nebraska.
As Geoffrey Lean wrote in London's Independent:
Their language may have 30 different words for "snow",
but it does not have one for "contamination". So it is
hard to explain to the Inuit people of the remote and
pristine Broughton Island, in the Canadian Arctic, that
-- thanks to a strange and newly discovered trick of the
world's natural systems -- they are more polluted by
some of the world's most toxic chemicals than any other
people on earth. (Lean)
The dangers threatening the Arctic ought to be a warning to
the entire world that nothing is "pure" or "natural" anymore, said
Watt-Cloutier. The Arctic region that seems "so pure and pristine
is already laced with deadly and invisible pollutants." To a
tourist with no interest in environmental toxicology,
Watt-Cloutier's Arctic homeland may seem as pristine as it ever
has been during its long, snow-swept winters. Many Inuit still
guide dogsleds onto the pack ice surrounding their Arctic-island
homelands to hunt polar bears and seals. Such a scene may seem
pristine, until one comes to understand that the polar bears' and
seals' body fats are laced with Dioxin and PCBs.
The toxicological due bills for modern industry at the lower
latitudes are being left on the Inuits' table in Nunavut, the
Canadian Arctic. Native people whose diets consist largely of sea
animals (whales, polar bears, fish and seals) have been consuming
a concentrated toxic chemical cocktail. Abnormally high levels of
Dioxin and other industrial chemicals are being detected in Inuit
mothers' breast milk. The bodies of Inuits on Broughton Island,
thousands of miles from the sources of the pollution, have the
highest levels of PCBs ever found, except in victims of industrial
accidents. Some Native people in Greenland have more than 70 times
as much of the pesticide hexaclorobenzene (HCB) in their bodies as
temperate-zone Canadians.
Dioxin, PCPs, and other toxins accumulate across generations in
breast-feeding mammals, including the Inuit and many of their food
sources.
Inuit infants have provided "a living test tube for
immunologists." (Cone) Due to their diet of contaminated sea
animals and fish, Inuit women's breast milk contains six times
more PCBs than women in urban Quebec, according to Quebec
government studies. Their babies have experienced strikingly high
rates of meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia and other infections
compared with other Canadians. One Inuit child out of every four
has chronic hearing loss due to infections.
Born with depleted white-blood cells, the children suffer
excessive bouts of diseases, including a 20-fold increase in
life-threatening meningitis compared to other Canadian children.
Their immune systems are so dysfunctional that they sometimes fail
to produce enough antibodies even to react to the usual childhood
vaccines.
The reproductive cycle of humans and other mammals compounds
the toxic effects of these chemicals. Airborne toxic substances
are absorbed by plankton and small fish, which are then eaten by
dolphins and whales, and other large animals. The mammals' thick
subcutaneous fat stores the hazardous substances, of which are
transmitted to offspring through breast-feeding. Sea mammals are
more vulnerable to this kind of toxicity than land animals, so the
levels of chemicals in their bodies can reach exceptionally high
levels. The level of these toxins increases with each breast-fed
generation.
"In our studies, there was a marked increase in the incidence
of infectious disease among breast-fed babies exposed to a high
concentration of contaminants," said Eric Dewailly, a Quebec
Public Health Center researcher who coordinated the work. (Cone)
According to the Quebec Health Center, a concentration of
1,052 parts per billion of PCBs has been found in Arctic women's
milk fat. This compares to a reading of 7,002 in polar bear fat,
1,002 ppb in whale blubber, 527 ppb in seal blubber, and 152 ppb
in fish. The United States Environmental Protection Agency safety
standard for edible poultry, by contrast, is 3 ppb, and in fish, 2
ppb. At 50 ppb, soil is often considered to be hazardous waste.
Inuit babies have experienced strikingly high rates of
meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia and other infections compared
with other Canadians. One Inuit child out of every four has
chronic hearing loss due to infections. A study published
September 12, 1996, in the New England Journal of Medicine
confirmed that children exposed to low levels of PCBs in the womb
grow up with low IQs, poor reading comprehension, difficulty
paying attention, and memory problems.
The Arctic has become a dumping ground for PCBs, Dioxin and
agricultural chemicals. All are manufactured organic chlorine
compounds released by industries at the lower latitudes. The
compounds are swept into the Arctic by ocean currents and
prevailing winds, diffusing quickly and easily. Pesticide residues
in the Arctic today may include some used decades ago in the
southern United States. Cold also slows the natural decomposition
of these toxins, so they persist in the Arctic environment longer
than at lower latitudes. At the same time that Inuits are being
poisoned by several "persistent organic pollutants" ("POPs" to
environmental toxicologists), they are discovering that parts of
their homelands also are laced with toxic "hot spots" left behind
by abandoned military installations and mines, all also imports
from the industrial south.
Dioxin is produced by a number of chemical processes,
including some metal-refining methods, the chlorinated bleaching
of pulp and paper, and, most importantly, as a byproduct of the
combustion of certain materials. The biggest Dioxin sources in
North America are municipal waste incinerators (25 percent),
backyard trash burning (22 percent), cement kilns burning
hazardous waste (18 percent), medical waste incinerators (11
percent), secondary copper smelters (8 percent), and iron
sintering plants (7 percent). Together, these six categories
contributed more than 90 percent of total North American emissions
during the middle 1990s.
One household's trash, burned in a backyard barrel, may
release more Dioxins, furans, and other chlorine-containing
pollutants tons of trash burned by a municipal waste incinerator
serving tens of thousands of homes, according to a report by the
Environmental Protection Agency's Open Burning Test Facility in
Research Triangle Park, N.C. Roughly 20 million people in rural
areas burn trash in their backyards, according to E.P.A. surveys.
(Saar, 2000) The report appeared in the February 1, 2000 issue of
Environmental Science & Technology.
Such backyard burning may contribute as much chemical toxicity
to the air as all the United States' municipal waste incinerators
combined, said Dwain Winters, director of the agency's Dioxin
Policy Project. "With improved pollution controls on incinerators,
backyard burning may turn out to be one of the largest sources of
dioxins and furans to the air," Mr. Winters said. "We need a
better understanding of barrel burning before we set policy on
this source of air pollution." (Saar, 2000)
The amount of dioxins and furans produced by any given
trash-burning site are influenced by temperature, burn time, trash
density and the presence of chlorine. PVC plastics, salt in food
wastes and bleached paper products, among other things, produce
Dioxin and furans.
The agency estimates that wood burned in fireplaces and stoves
produces very small amounts of dioxins and furans compared with
trash burned in barrels.
Human exposure to Dioxin is almost entirely (95 percent) through
consumption of animal fats. In temperate climates, dioxin enters
the food chain through animal food crops and appears in milk and
beef. In the Arctic, Dioxin enters the food chain through lichen,
mosses and shrubs eaten by caribou, and through algae eaten by
fish on which seals and walruses feed.
PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls -- are a family of more than
200 related organic compounds. Nearly every animal and plant on
Earth now contains trace levels of these toxins. Some are
harmless, while others are extremely toxic and have been linked to
diseases of the blood, immune and nervous systems, as well as with
respiratory and skin problems, and with underweight and premature
babies.
POPs have been linked to cancer, birth defects and other
neurological, reproductive and immune-system damage in people and
animals. At high levels, these chemicals also damage the central
nervous system. Many of them also act as endocrine disruptors,
causing deformities in sex organs as well as long-term dysfunction
of reproductive systems. "POPs" also can interfere with the
function of the brain and endocrine system by penetrating the
placental barrier and scrambling the instructions of the naturally
produced chemical messengers. The latter tell a fetus how to
develop in the womb and post-natally through puberty; should
interference occur, immune, nervous, and reproductive systems may
not develop as programmed by the genes inherited by the embryo.
Because they are not easily broken down or excreted, the
compounds remain in the body for months or years. In ecosystems,
they tend to concentrate or "bioaccumulate" in animals at the top
of the food chain, in the bodies of large meat-eaters such as
marine mammals, polar bears, raptors and human beings. Dolphins,
seals and whales in the northern seas are being contaminated.
Large land animals, such as caribou, also are affected.
The use of PCBs has been banned in North America since the
late 1970s, a ban that has not been strictly enforced. PCBs are
still used in third-world countries. Even in areas where they are
no longer being manufactured (such as Canada), PCBs are still
being released into the atmosphere, sometimes in unexpected ways.
The big ice storm that hit Eastern Canada and parts of Upstate New
York during 1997 knocked down transformers and power lines had a
little-known side effect: it spilled PCBs into the environment.
Canada has banned production of the toxic chemicals but they
remain in wide use as insulating agents. It is not known how much
PCBs the ice storm released into the air.
Rapid economic growth, especially in Asia, has increased the
discharge of various POPs into the air of the lower and middle
latitudes. More people are living more affluently, stoking the
industrial engines which produce Dioxin and other POPs. Rising
populations also have been supported by increasing use of
industrialized agriculture (including the "green revolution"),
which utilizes many organic chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides,
and herbicides. More than 90 percent of the chemicals sprayed on
farmland evaporate in a short period of time and begin drifting
through the atmosphere.
The concentration of chemical toxins in the Canadian Arctic is
also intensified by ocean circulation, notably the movement of
water from the Atlantic Ocean through the Canadian archipelago to
the High Arctic. The upwelling of this "older" water in the Arctic
Ocean and Beaufort Sea may help explain why industrial or
agricultural chemicals used decades ago are only now being
detected in regions of the High Arctic.
High concentrations of Dioxin in the Arctic have been traced
to specific sources in the United States, Canada and Mexico. A
study, "Long-range Air Transport of Dioxin from North American
Sources to Ecologically Vulnerable Receptors in Nunavut, Arctic
Canada," was conducted for the Montreal-based North American
Commission for Environmental Cooperation by the Center for the
Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New
York. The study covered a one-year period beginning in July, 1996.
This report is the first to use weather patterns, pollution data
and corporate emissions records to track Dioxin through the
atmosphere to the Arctic from specific sources across North
America, said Barry Commoner, who co-authored the report. (NACEC)
Using an air-transport model developed by the U.S. National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a research
team headed by Commoner, of Queens College, New York, identified
facilities which have caused Dioxin pollution at eight locations
around Nunavut, the Canadian territory covering the eastern Arctic
north of the 60th parallel to the pole. This study compiled 44,091
specific Dioxin sources, of which 16,729 were in Canada, 22,439 in
the U.S., and 4,923 in Mexico. Nine of the top-ten contributors of
Dioxin deposited in Nunavut were from the United States, including
three municipal waste plants in Minnesota, Iowa and Pennsylvania;
three cement kilns in Michigan, Missouri and Nebraska; two iron
plants in Indiana, and a copper smelter in Illinois. Some have
since reduced or eliminated their Dioxin emissions.
"The last thing we need at this time is worry about the very
country food that nourishes us, spiritually and emotionally,
poisoning us," Watt-Cloutier told reporters. "This is not just
about contaminants on our plate. This is a whole way of being, a
whole cultural heritage that is at stake here for us." (Mofina)
In many cases, the Inuit have no practical alternative to
"country food." Although a few small general stores do business in
Canadian Inuit hamlets today, all the food is flown in. Weeks-old
produce is usually of very poor quality. No roads or natural land
bridges lead south from the villages. The cost of air freight,
compounded by distance, raises cost of a quart of milk to $4, and
that of a battered head of lettuce to $3. A tiny frozen turkey the
size of a stewing hen costs $40 in the Arctic.
Active as well as abandoned mining and military sites compound
the problems of the Inuit with toxic organic compounds. Joe Kunuk,
Mayor of Iqaluit, described recent efforts to clean up Iqaluit's
Upper Base, a military installation established just north of the
community by the U.S. Air Force during the early 1950s. Like a
number of similar sites scattered throughout the North, the base
was found to be contaminated with PCBs from a variety of sources.
A clean-up program, co-ordinated with the regional Inuit
Association and the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut, provided more
than 50 local people -- 90 per cent of them Inuit -- with training
in toxic waste handling and disposal. All told, more than $2
million was spent to clean up the site, and local businesses
benefited greatly from the project.
Extensive hydroelectric development also took place in James
Bay during the 1970s, before an alliance of Native and non-Native
peoples put a halt to hydroelectric development in the area. The
creation of hydroelectric reservoirs intensified the methylation
of inorganic mercury into methylmercury; once transformed, the
methylmercury enters the food chain. In 1986, Hydro-Quebec and the
Quebec government, along with the nine Cree communities of the
James Bay region, signed an agreement to monitor exposure levels
in the Cree population.
Chief Ed Jack, an Elder from the Taku River Tlingit First
Nation in Atlin, B.C., described environmental problems associated
with mining in the Taku Valley of northern British Columbia, about
30 miles inland from Juneau, Alaska. He described how his small
community had witnessed firsthand the gradual destruction of
salmon streams and wildlife habitat. However, over time, the
Tlingit began to develop the skills necessary to challenge the
accepted practices of resource-development companies. They
developed effective communication strategies, launched challenges
in the courts, and educated people in the community about
environmental regulation. Jack gave this account at hearings
conducted during 1996 and 1997 by the Canadian Polar Commission.
(CPC)
There were three mines going, the Takuchi, the Polaris,
and the Big Bull Mine. There were 250 men working three
shifts day and night. They never stopped the work; they
worked the graveyard, night shift, and day shift.
Everything was brought up by barge. The stuff that came
off the mine when they washed the ore went right into a
creek, called Canyon Creek....The mine just dumped the
garbage off the bridge into the plains, and you have a
huge garbage pile lying in the plains. I say the
`plains' because the glacier dammed up a lake, and twice
a year the whole valley floods. The whole valley floods
as high as you can see it, twenty feet of water, just
the trees are sticking out. All that garbage gets washed
away; at that time, I thought, they sure are smart and
know how to get rid of their garbage. Later on, I
thought about it, and all the tailings were put into the
flood plain? Now, the scientists have checked into it,
and those tailings are still there, giving off
acid...still polluting the river.
Governmental actions are beginning to cut Dioxin emissions. In
June, 1998, negotiators from 120 countries gathered in Montreal to
start work on an unprecedented United Nations treaty to phase out
DDT and eleven other toxic compounds that have been linked to
cancers, birth defects and ecological disruption. Canada, Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the
United States are working together to accomplish a phase-out of
PCBs, and to develop environmentally sound disposal practices.
(Binder, McAndrew)
In the United States, the U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency has promulgated regulations that should reduce dioxin
emissions by 99 percent from municipal waste incinerators and by
about 95 percent from medical waste incinerators. The United
States Environmental Protection Agency also has promulgated
regulations to reduce Dioxin from some hazardous waste
incinerators, including cement kilns.
In Canada, environment ministers in June, 2000 accepted a
Canada-wide Standard for Dioxins and Furans. Six types of sources,
including waste incineration, burning salt-laden wood, residential
wood combustion, and electric arc furnace steel manufacturing,
have been identified for early action. The municipal waste
incinerator in Quebec has undergone modifications to virtually
eliminate its Dioxin emissions.
Jack Anawak, a member of the Canadian Parliament from
Nunatsiaq, told the Canadian Polar Commission that
The first step is one that's already been taken: we've
regulated PCBs, DDT, and other toxins that, when
released to the environment, get carried up to the North
and affect the people who have had nothing to do with
the creation of the problem in the first place. We must
get our own house in order, and that's what we are
doing. The next step is to put pressure on the
international community so that other countries will
understand the consequences of their actions and stop
polluting. (CPC)
Watt-Cloutier told the Canadian Polar Commission that the World
Health Organization and similar groups must come to understand
that the reclamation of indigenous wisdom is a process that will
reap the greatest benefits for aboriginal populations. "Without
that input and that kind of focus, the world really does run the
risk of operating under the illusion that it is helping when,
actually, sometimes, the reverse is happening," she said. "The
dominant world will continue to be baffled as to what really ails
us, despite the fact that they provide a lot of money and effort
to try to help us. This very expensive and ineffective aid only
perpetuates our problems and, in my opinion, is another subtle
form of the big `C word' -- colonialism. In fact, this subtle
form, in the appearance sometimes of true help with lots of funds
attached to it actually keeps us and the donors stuck in a very
non-productive form of dance, even destructive at times." (CPC)
One of the most acute problems is finding a replacement for
DDT, residues of which have also been found in Inuit mothers'
breast milk and the fat of arctic animals. The insecticide is
still the first choice to kill the mosquitoes that transmit
malaria, which kills more than a million children in tropical
countries each year. Pyrethroids are presently favored, but they
are more expensive. In South Africa, the mosquitoes developed a
resistance against a pyrethroid within five years, whereas they
never became resistant against DDT during 50 years of usage.
International negotiations in Bonn, Germany, aimed at an
international treaty to eliminate organic toxins chemicals went
slowly during the spring of the year 2000. "What we are talking
about now is what qualifiers we can put on the word
`elimination,'" one observer told the Nunatsiaq News, a newspaper
serving Canadian Inuits, in its March 31, 2000 edition (Ell).
Total elimination is impossible because Dioxin is an unintended
byproduct of combustion whose production cannot be totally
avoided. In its own laws, Canada uses the expression "virtual
elimination," meaning "as little as technically feasible."
Watt-Cloutier summarized the situation: "A comprehensive,
verifiable, and rigorously implemented global convention to
eliminate these POPs is required. Will we get it? Can Canada
persuade others that such a convention serves their self-interests
as well as ours?"(Watt-Cloutier)
REFERENCES
* Binder, Sarah. "United Nations Sets out to Ben Chemicals Like
DDT, PCBs." Ottawa Citizen, June 29, 1998, n.p.
* Canadian Polar Commission. For Generations to Come: A
Canadian Conference on Contaminants, the Environment, and
Human Health in the Arctic, October 8-10, 1996. Iqaluit,
Northwest Territories.
[Paper listed at:
http://www.polarcom.gc.ca/publications.htm#polarispapers,
and can be ordered thru the Ottawa Office:
http://www.polarcom.gc.ca/contacts.htm ]
* Cone, Marla. "Human Immune Systems May be Pollution Victims."
Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1996, A-1.
* Ell, Renate. "Bonn POPs Talks Fall Short of Expectations."
Nunatsiaq News, March 31, 2000.
[ http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut000331/nvt20331_09.html ]
* Lean, Geoffrey. "World Industry Poisons Arctic Purity; A
Climatic Trick Dumps Chemicals from Afar on People and
Animals in the Far North." The Independent (London), December
15, 1996, 15.
* McAndrew, Brian. "World Takes Aim at `Dirtry Dozen'
Pollutants: Montreal Talks Bid to Ban Use of Worst Toxins."
Toronto Star, June 29, 1998, 1.
* Mofina, Rick. "Study Pinpoints Dioxin Origins: Cancer-causing
Agents in Arctic Aboriginals? Breast Milk Comes from U.S. and
Quebec." Montreal Gazette, October 4, 2000, A-12.
* North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
Study Links Dioxin pollution in Arctic to North American
Sources. October 4, 2000. [ http://www.cec.org/ ]
[ http://www.cec.org/news/announce/Data.cfm? varlan=english&vardate=60&unique_no=291 ]
* Saar, Robert A. [No title.] New York Times, January 4, 2000.
[ http://irptc.unep.ch/pops/POPs_Inc/press_releases/pressrel-2k/pr28.htm ]
[listed in: http://irptc.unep.ch/pops/newlayout/press_items.htm ]
* Watt-Cloutier, Sheila and Terry Fenge. "Commentary: impasse
at POPs talks Unacceptable for Inuit." Nunatsiaq News, March
17, 2000.
[ http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut000331/nvt20317_24.html ]
Sunday, 30 March 2014
#RRT-001: The Trashing of the Arctic
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