Global warming and the disappearing Arctic ice pack is getting a lot
of press but there are other sinister aspects of industrialization
on the arctic.

PCBs and other POPs (Persistent Organic Products) get concentrated
in the north because of wind patterns and ocean currents. They then
get further concentrated as you go up the food chain from plankton,
to krill to baitfish to food fish to sea mammals to man.

Here is a new concern, not widely reported....

From The London Times September 12, 2007

Pollution blamed for fall in Arctic baby boys

Twice as many girls as boys are being born across much of the Arctic
because of pollution from industrialized countries, scientists have
found. The Scandinavian scientists behind the study suspect the same
to be the case in Greenland and Canada. 

They say that coastal Inuit populations are at particular risk
because pollution builds up in the blubber of seals and whales,
which are an important part of the traditional Inuit diet. The
findings were reported by Lars-Otto Reiersen, head of the Arctic
Monitoring and Assessment Programme, and Jens Hansen, director of
the Centre of Arctic Environmental Medicine at the University of
Aarhus, at a symposium in Greenland organised by the Orthodox
Church. 

The scientists examined mothers and children on Russia's Kola,
Taimyr and Chukotka peninsulas, in the Pe-chora river basin and on
the Commodore Islands. 

They analysed the level of PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls, known
to cause cancer in animals and to affect their nervous, reproductive
and immune systems - which the women had ingested. "We saw the most
dramatic effects in Chukotka," Dr Reiersen said. "When the mother
had an average of two to four micrograms of PCBs or more per litre
of blood, we found she bore on average two girls for every boy."

Similar sex-ratio changes and neo-natal problems occurred in the
northern Italian town of Seveso in 1976 when an accident at a
chemical plant exposed local people to high levels of dioxins. 

PCB levels are ten times higher in parts of Greenland than in
Russia. The pollutants are carried north by winds and ocean
currents, and accumulate as they pass up the food chain. Some are
endocrine disrupters - chemicals that mimic sex hormones.

Aqqaluk Lynge, the former chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Council
and himself a Greenlander, said: "This is a disaster, especially for
the 1,500 people who make up the Inuit nations in the far northeast
of Russia. 

"In the north of Greenland, near the Thule American airbase, only
girl babies are being born to Inuit families. The problem is acute
in the north and east of Greenland, where people still have the
traditional diet. This has become a critical question of people's
survival, but few governments want to talk about the problem." Dr
Reiersen said that pregnant women were being advised to avoid
traditional diets, despite the growing problem in Greenland of
obesity caused by consumption of processed foods such as chips and
cola. 

Dr Reiersen and Dr Hansen report that PCBs are at least "an
aggravating factor" in the dearth of male infants being born in
Greenland, and suspect the chemicals are in fact the direct cause.



Cheers

YK Jim


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