Arctic Pollutants Come From U.S., Mexico
N E W Y O R K, Oct. 4, 2000 -- Cancer-causing dioxinspolluting Canada’s Arctic region have been linked for the firsttime to specific incinerators and smelters thousands of miles south in the United States, Canada and Mexico, a studyreleased on Tuesday said.
The authors said a number of major sources of dioxinemissions have been restricted since the research undertaken inNunavut territory for the North American Commission forEnvironmental Cooperation (NACEC) from July 1, 1996, to June 30,1997.
But Greg Block of the Montreal-based organization said thestudy “demonstrates that we should revise our concept ofneighbors. In a very real sense, because of the long-rangeatmospheric transport of substances like dioxins, the Inuitpeople of the far north are our neighbors.
“They receive pollutants, a problem not of their making,that can impact on their very way of life and culture.”
Pollutants in Meat, Breast Milk
Dioxins, which are produced by chemical processes such asmetal refining, the chlorinated bleaching of pulp and paper andburning certain materials, have been linked in other studies tocancer, birth defects and neurological, reproductive and immunesystem damage in people and animals.
Researchers for NACEC, a group established under the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement, were not required to study thehealth effects on humans and wildlife.
However, a summary of the study headed by scientist BarryCommoner of Queens College, City University of New York, statedthat “for years, dioxins have been detected in the Arctic dietof fish, seal and caribou meat and recently, in Inuit mothers’breast milk. The sources of dioxins clearly migrate fromsomewhere else, but where they come from has not been knownuntil now.”
Diet Change Not an Option
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of the non-profit InuitCircumpolar Conference Canada group, said at the newsconference that some have suggested the Inuit change theirdiets to avoid exposure.
“But for us in the Arctic as a people who are traditionallytied to the land, this really is not an option,” she said. “Wehave no alternative to traditional food...the environment isour supermarket and we cannot and will not abandon the land.”
Researchers used the remote Nunavut territory in ArcticCanada, which has few local sources of dioxins, to demonstratehow pollutants travel to areas far away from the source ofemissions. Eight locations were identified as receptors ofdioxins in the territory covering the eastern Arctic.
“People tend to forget that dioxin that moves from thesouth somewhere to Nunavut is being deposited all the way enroute and the weather patterns from every source in the Midwestcan very well be carried into the desert states,” Commoner toldreporters “The consequence is that this process is reallydisseminating dioxin and other pollutants pretty uniformly overthe entire globe from Mexico on up to the Arctic Circle.”
U.S., Mexico to Blame
Commoner and his team used an adaptation of a computermodel developed by the U.S. National Oceanographic andAtmospheric Administration (NOAA). Called the HybridSingle-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (Hysplit-4),it tracked “puffs” of dioxins in the air released at locationsin the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Of the 23 classes of dioxin sources identified in thestudy, only six accounted for 90 percent of all dioxinemissions in North America, the report’s summary stated. Thosewere municipal solid waste incinerators, backyard trashburning, cement kilns burning hazardous waste, medical wasteincinerators, secondary copper smelters and iron sinteringplants.
The report said of 44,000 emission sources identified inNorth America as causing pollution in Nunavut, the UnitedStates accounted for 62 percent, Mexico accounted for 30percent and Canada for 8 percent. Dioxin sources within Nunavutaccounted for less than 0.02 percent of the total.
The study said an estimated two to 20 percent of dioxinpollution in Nunavut areas originated outside North America,mainly in Japan, France, Belgium and Britain.