NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8493

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: CENSORED: TOXIC PCB CONTAMINATION ABOVE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
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TOXIC PCB CONTAMINATION ABOVE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

Seventy miles north of the Arctic Circle is Broughton Island where
some 450 Eskimos (they call themselves Inuit, or "the people") live much
like their ancestors have for thousands of years, by hunting and
fishing.  The largest "industry" in town is a sewing circle.

Broughton Island is the last place on Earth one would associate with
chemical hazards.  But now the Inuit are paying the price of the
comfortable, industrialized lives enjoyed by those who live far away
in the south, even many thousands of miles distant.

In 1989, the villagers learned that they have higher levels of PCBs in
their blood than any known population on Earth, excluding the victims
of industrial accidents.

PCB's, polychlorinated biphenyls, are a family of more than 200 related
organic compounds some of which are extremely toxic and have been linked
with diseases of the blood, immune and nervous systems, with respiratory
and skin problems, and with underweight and premature babies.

While the use of PCBs has been banned in North America since the late
1970s, the chemicals migrate to Broughton Island on the Earth's
long-range air and water currents, some from as far off as Southeast
Asia.  The laborious process of discovering where the chemicals origi-
nate is only now beginning.

Derek Muir, a research scientist at the Canadian government's Freshwa-
ter Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said there was quite a
biomagnification going on.  He explained that most Arctic marine
mammals are thickly padded with fat for insulation and thus accumulate
organochlorines in their bodies far more readily than the leaner animals
living on land.  By the time PCBs move from the waters of the Arctic
Ocean into the tiny, one celled animals at the bottom of the food
chain, from there into the flesh of cod and other fish, then into seals,
and finally on up to the polar bears that eat the seals, their
concentration has increased about three billion times.

Kevin Lloyd, director of wildlife management for the Northwest
Territories government in Yellowknife, warned "Now, we know this really
is Spaceship earth, and there is no part of the world that is immune
from activity in other parts."

Ironically, the language of the Inuit people, Inuktitut, has no word for
"contamination."  Now, it appears, they will need one.

(SSU CENSORED RESEARCHER:  ANN STEFFORA)

SOURCE:LOS ANGELES TIMES 890 Yonge St., Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4W 3P4

Reprinted in:  THIS WORLD, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

DATE:8/11/91
Title:"The Toxic Circle"

AUTHOR:Mary Williams Walsh

COMMENTS:  Investigative journalist Mary Williams Walsh says that, as
far as she knows, no journalists from other general-interest
publications have both traveled to the Arctic to interview the people
there and done extensive interviews with scientists in the south who are
trying to trace the sources of the contaminants and assess their
effects.

Walsh suggests that it is important for people to know about this Arctic
pollution since the more the media highlight the ability of organic
compounds to travel the world on air currents, the more the public is
apt to demand that proper controls be placed on the manufacture and use
of the chemicals in question -- and the greater the likelihood of
meaningful international regulation.  She points out that "Airborne
chemical pollutants don't respect borders, of course, but all too
often since 198 l, American political leaders, leaning on claims of
national sovereignty, have opposed international pollution controls.
Among Western developed nations, Washington's solitary opposition to
protocols on global warming, and its years of resistance to a bilateral
accord with Canada on acid rain, come to mind.  "

Walsh also speculated on why this subject hadn't been covered more by
the American media.  "It is frightfully expensive to travel to the
Arctic.  Distances are long, there are no roads, a visiting reporter has
to fly, and plane tickets are never discounted.  In addition, this is
grubby, uncomfortable research.  I was in Broughton Island in June,
and there was still about two feet of snow on the ground.  I was six
months pregnant at the time, and even so, the best accommodation I could
scare up was a plywood bench in a quonset hut with no electricity or
running water.

"The sort of publications one might expect to find doing a story like
this -- small, alternative magazines and newspapers -- are unlikely to
have the wherewithal the reporting takes.  And the major networks, which
have entered an era of cost containment, are probably not disposed to
send a crew into the Arctic for a story like this.  Nor is television a
medium that readily lends itself to explanations of complicated
scientific subjects.  I have to hand it to my editors in Los Angeles.
They ran the piece I wrote at almost the length I wrote it, and were far
more excited about it than I dreamed possible.  It was a costly story to
do, but they never second-guessed me on my budget -- or my emphases."