Posted by Ayesha on June 11, 2001 at 20:44:46:
Hi Everyone,
Here is an article from today's San Francisco Chronicle. I think it is important to know about these environmental issues and the problems that are facing the people of the region. It is good to see that people are taking a stance and not sitting by just letting this happen.
I am posting this rather late at night for the folks on the East Coast. I may repost in the morning for all who do not read the previous day's posts.
I sure do wish I was going to be with you all. Please do think of us while you are at the gathering and send some of your wonderful energy our way!
All the best,
Ayesha
Spoiled Tundra Northbound chemicals from U.S. companies is threatening Inuit lives
K.L. Capozza, Chronicle Foreign Service - Monday, June 11, 2001 - ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/11/MN119459.DTL
From her window overlooking Iqaluit's harbor, Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier can see hunters heading out into the vast Arctic tundra in search of seal, caribou and walrus. Muted winter sunlight casts a pink glow on an endless white expanse of snow-covered land and frozen sea.
At first glance, the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut appears pristine, untouched by this century's industrial development. But the is growing evidence for a starkly different picture: the Inuit live in an environment polluted by toxic chemicals that migrate here from the United States. Now, in a struggle to preserve their health and way of life, the Inuit are pressuring polluters located along an industrial belt from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to clean up their act.
"We are only 150,000 Inuit in the world and we have become the net recipients of these persistent organic pollutants," said Watt-Cloutier, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an international Inuit advocacy group.
Her concern is based in part on a controversial study last year by environmental activist and Queens College researcher Barry Commoner. His research showed that prevailing weather patterns carry dioxin from U.S. waste incinerators and other industrial plants to the Inuit's backyards, where it accumulates in the local ecosystem.
Commoner tracked dioxin from 44,091 sources in the United States to the far north, using data from the National Weather Service. The weather systems act like cargo flights, shipping the contaminants quickly and efficiently to the northernmost reaches of the globe, he found.
In addition, scientists have studied a process known as the grasshopper effect that steers other industrial toxins like PCBs and pesticides to the Arctic. Pollutants evaporated or emitted into the atmosphere in the United States travel north on air currents until they collide with a cold front causing them to condense and fall on the Earth's surface.
When the weather heats up again, the chemicals evaporate and cycle back into the atmosphere where they continue to ride the air currents north. This repetitive cycle causes the pollutants to slowly "hop" their way north hundreds of miles from where they originate.
"Chemicals which undergo this multiple step transport can reach surprisingly high concentrations in the Arctic," said Frank Wania, a researcher at the University of Toronto who models the atmospheric movement of pollutants.
Lingering Toxins
For example, the cotton crop pesticide toxaphene, which was banned in North America in 1982, is still found in Arctic wildlife, thousands of miles from the Deep South where the chemical was once widely used.
Once in the Arctic, the cold, dry climate impedes the breakdown of these hitchhiking contaminants causing them to build up and magnify as they move up the food chain.
Ultimately, the pollution reaches Inuit people whose diet is rich in fatty meat where the chemicals tend to be most concentrated. When Inuit families eat raw seal and whale as they have done for centuries, they are also ingesting toxic chemicals like dioxin, a known carcinogen.
"Sea mammals are like vacuum cleaners in our oceans that suck up this pollution," said Paul Connet, professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
Studies show that Inuit women's breast milk contains levels of toxins like PCBs that are up to six times higher than the level found in southern Canadian women.
Now armed with new evidence that a handful of American polluters are responsible for much of the dioxin that ends up in Nunavut, Inuit activists are asking the top U.S. offenders to stem the flow of pollution from their smoke stacks to their communities.
Commoner's controversial study, commissioned by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, found that only a dozen polluters were responsible for the vast majority of the dioxin that ends up in Nunavut.
But critics of the report say the model Commoner used is not accurate enough to single out individual sources, and they note that the emissions data were from 1996 and 1997, before new federal dioxin guidelines drastically reduced emissions.
Atmospheric scientists familiar with the model say that while the tool is fairly accurate in tracing the movement of dioxin, there are always unknown factors that influence the results.
The No. 1 source of dioxin pollution in Nunavut, Commoner claims, is the main waste incinerator in Ames, Iowa. Now Bob Kindred, the assistant city manager of Ames, suddenly finds himself fending off allegations that the plant in his 48,000-person town is poisoning the Inuit.
"The announcement of this dioxin pollution was a total surprise to everyone in this community," he said. "It was terrible to be singled out as the worst polluter. It's something we have been wrestling with since that time."
Kindred raised the issue with local scientists who contend that the study exaggerated the role Ames plays in polluting the Arctic. Still, the findings and the pressure from Inuit advocacy groups prompted Ames to look into its dioxin emissions, which haven't been measured for nearly 20 years.
Commoner's study also found that a municipal waste incinerator in Harrisburg, Penn. is the largest source of dioxin in the tiny, whaling village of Qiqiktarjuaq (ki-ki-TAR-joo-ak) on the east coast of Baffin Island.
Suddenly, these two drastically different communities located thousands of miles apart are being tied by an environmental fluke. However, residents of the 480-person community weren't surprised to hear that dioxin is creeping into their food web.
Qiqiktarjuaq was the first village in Nunavut that scientists studied for contamination back in 1985. The results of these early investigations were published in a 1989 report by Health and Welfare Canada which showed that 63 percent of the children in Qiqiktarjuaq had PCB-blood levels that exceeded Health Canada's "tolerable" guidelines.
A barrage of health studies followed in the wake of these initial disturbing findings, and researchers now know that the contaminants first found in the village are present in various degrees throughout the Arctic region.
But whether or not the migratory pollutants from the south are directly causing illness in Nunavut is not clear. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both dioxin and PCBs are known carcinogens that are also associated with learning disabilities, hormone disruption and immune system impairment.
Several studies have shown that Inuit infants suffer from recurring infections. Some researchers suspect that the trend points to immun system impairment but the exact cause is difficult to separate out because alcoholism, smoking, and drug use are so prevalent in Inuit communities.
Clearly, this evidence is alarming to Inuit people who are suddenly faced with the notion that the food they have eaten for centuries is now poisonous.
At stake is their entire way of life, says Watt-Cloutier who grew up following the migration of caribou in Northern Quebec, often spending nights in an igloo with her family. "I am very connected to my country food," Watt- Cloutier, referring to the Inuit's traditional diet. "It's what sustains me."
Inuit Life Threatened
The Inuit's spiritual and cultural tie to their diet has made the Canadian government's task of formulating health recommendations ethically complex. "Where we would do a risk-benefit analysis, they (the Inuit) tend to use a benefit-risk analysis," said Mark Feeley, toxicologist with Health Canada.
"They first consider all the benefits of that food commodity and then look at the negatives because there are limited alternatives and huge social, cultural and nutritional advantages to the consumption of 'country' food."
Further confusing any decision is the knowledge that a marked deterioration in health has historically dogged Native peoples who abandon their traditional diets in favor of processed foods that are high in refined sugars.
Even more pressing is how the Inuit will support themselves without the much-needed supplemental food that comes from subsistence hunting.
Given these mitigating factors, many Inuit say that until the scientific evidence proves, without a doubt, that the traditional diet is a health hazard, they'll go on eating the way they always have.
"Before I stop what I'm eating I need 100 percent proof that it's harmful. Not a presumption, but proof," says Ben Kovic, an Inuit hunter and president of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board.
The Inuit's cause got a large boost last month when United Nations-member countries, including the United States, signed a treaty that will eventually eliminate a dozen highly toxic chemicals including DDT and dioxin. But until the treaty is ratified, the Inuit will continue to target American polluters.
"We are the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world," she said. "It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world is impacted just as heavily."
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