Indigenous Siberians Among World's Most Contaminated People - LA Times

[hatrack]

"Russians in remote reaches of the Arctic carry growing levels of industrial chemicals and pesticides, making them among the most contaminated people on Earth, according to a report released Wednesday by the Russian Federation and an international group of scientists.

Since the collapse of the Soviet economy, Russia's indigenous northerners have had less access to imported foods and are relying more on a traditional diet of seal, whale and other wild animals. These natural food sources have accumulated toxic chemicals as pollutants have drifted northward from urban areas with winds and ocean currents. As a result, chemical concentrations in Arctic inhabitants, particularly in residents of Chukotka, across the Bering Strait from Alaska, are extraordinarily high.

Scientists have already shown that other Arctic natives, particularly the Inuit of Greenland and Canada, have the highest levels of many toxic substances found in humans anywhere. But this project is the first to monitor people in the vast, isolated regions of Russia's far north. The research was conducted by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a scientific group funded by Arctic nations, including the United States, which worked with the Russian government and the Russian Assn. of Indigenous Peoples of the North. The report calls the contaminants "one of the most serious environmental and human health risks" for the Russian Arctic. The levels of two pesticides, hexachlorobenzene and hexachlorocyclohexane, and, in some areas, PCBs and the pesticide DDT, in Russians are "among the highest reported for all of the Arctic regions," the report says.

EDIT

The health threat is mostly to infants and children, since the chemicals are passed on to fetuses and taint breast milk. In studies of Canadian Inuit, PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, have been linked to immune suppression and slight neurological damage in infants. Many of the contaminants have been tied to hormonal changes in Arctic wildlife and to cancer in laboratory animals. Some of the contaminants probably came from within Russia, particularly the PCBs. The report recommends that Russia create an inventory of sources within its borders. However, other chemicals, such as the pesticide mirex, were never used in Russia, so they probably flowed there from cities in North America or Europe, propelled by northbound winds and currents. "We knew that levels probably would be higher in Russia because of all the contamination going on in that country," Watt-Cloutier said."

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-arctic18nov18,1,4992580.story?coll=la-news-a_section