TL: CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION IN CANADA'S ARCTIC 
SO: Greenpeace Canada, (GP)
DT: February 14, 1997

CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION IN CANADA'S ARCTIC 
Will governments take action at an Ottawa meeting this week?

The huge threat to Canada's Arctic posed  by persistent organic
pollutants (POPs) will be a key issue under discussion at the
Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) meeting in
Ottawa this week.  The forum is the primary  priority-setting
and international leadership  body on sound management of
chemicals.  Its meeting in Ottawa follows a critically important
meeting in Nairobi last week where the United Nations
Environment Program's Governing Council set up a committee  to
negotiate a convention placing global restrictions on the
production of POPs.  

Greenpeace welcomes the United Nations decision.   However,  the
POPs convention negotiators will not begin their work until in
1998, and the convention is not expected to be ready for signing
before 2000. 

At the Ottawa meeting Greenpeace representatives are therefore
urging governments to take  quicker action on what has become,
in some regions of the globe like Canada's Arctic, a crisis of
alarming proportions.   

"Dire consequences" for Arctic Canada   

POPs include numerous pesticides, industrial chemicals such as
PCBs, and industrial waste byproducts such as dioxin.  These
substances are all known to undergo long-range transport in the
atmosphere,  through the process of "global distillation" in
which POPs used near the equator "hop" towards the Arctic by
repeated evaporation and condensation.  Donald Mackay, of Trent
University (Ontario), writing in a recent edition of the journal
Environmental Science and Technology, has found "compelling
evidence" that concentrations of the pesticide HCH, used mainly
in the tropics, increase dramatically at higher latitudes. 
Globally, the highest concentrations were measured on Canadian
territory, in Lancaster Sound and the Beaufort Sea (1).  

Advisories prohibiting consumption of fish from certain Arctic
lakes in the Yukon Territory were issued in 1992 after
measurements showed dangerously high levels of PCBs and
toxaphene. Toxaphene is a pesticide that was banned in Canada in
1983; it may also occur in pulp mill effluent.  

Reporting on the work of Mackay and Norwegian-based colleague
Frank Wania, the authoritative Environmental Data Services
(ENDS) Report warns that "arctic ecosystems are under threat",
with global distillation of POPs having "potentially dire
consequences in areas such as Canada, Greenland and northern
Scandinavia" (2). 

Childrens' health so compromised they can't be vaccinated  

POPs threaten human health because they contaminate food and
then build up in body fat. Inuit and First Nations communities
are especially vulnerable because they tend to rely heavily on
locally obtained fish and wildlife for food.  Being high on the
food chain, these foodstuffs have the highest levels of
contamination.  In some cases, they would be too contaminated to
be legally sold.  

 Once they have entered the body, POPs break down so slowly that
the total body burden typically increases over a lifetime. 
Women, however, have a unique way of reducing the amount of POPs
in their bodies: breast feeding.   Science News recently quoted
the author of a disturbing new report about Inuit children in
the northern Hudson Bay area fed on breast milk.  " Nursed on
human milk laced with organochlorines, these children not only
face a highly elevated risk of infection, but in some cases are
so immuno-compromised that they   can't be vaccinated, because
they don't produce any antibodies  ", the author of the report
said. (3).  

Dioxin: Canadian emissions and Canadian effects  

Although it is difficult for scientists to prove a causal link
between the contamination and the health effects, dioxin and
other POPs are known to be potent disruptors of the hormone
system.  Hormones control growth, reproduction, and resistance
to disease.  Following a vast study on dioxin, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency study warned in 1994 that "some
more highly exposed members of the population may be at risk for
a number of adverse effects including developmental toxicity,
reduced reproductive capacity in males based on decreased sperm
counts, reduced ability to withstand an immunological challenge
and others..."  

Eric Dewailly, of the Centre de Sant Publique de Qubec,
reported in 1989 that children in Northern Quebec have rates of
infection  that are 10 to 15 times higher than those of children
in Southern Quebec.  Dewailly, colleague Pierre Ayotte, and John
Ryan of Health Canada confirmed in a recent edition of the
journal Organohalogen Compounds that the breast milk of Inuit
women from northern Quebec is approximately seven times more
contaminated by dioxin than that of urban dwellers from the
south of the province.  The dioxin level in the breast milk of
Inuit women from Greenland is even higher - by a further factor
of three (4).   

Unlike those POPs which are pesticides and used mainly used in
the South, dioxin is an industrial waste byproduct emitted in
large amounts in northern countries.  In Canada, known dioxin
emission hot spots include Dow's Fort Saskatchewan plant
manufacturing the ingredients for PVC plastic (vinyl), the Swan
Hills hazardous waste incinerator (both in Alberta), and the
municipal waste incinerator at Levis, Quebec.  Dioxin emissions
at Levis exceed Canadian guidelines by a factor of approximately
1000.  

The way ahead   

Greenpeace is calling on governments attending this week's IFCS
meeting in Ottawa to recognize the urgency of the POPs threat by
taking immediate action to eradicate these substances from the
planet.. 

The government of Canada must act to protect its Arctic
communities by implementing its own toxics substances management
policy. This policy, which calls for the "virtual elimination"
of POPs, was adopted in June 1995, but has yet to be put into
effect.  In the face of the crisis in the Arctic, no further
delay eliminating Canada's own POPs sources can be tolerated.  


References  

 (1) Frank Wania and Donald Mackay, Environmental Science and
Technology Vol. 30, No. 9 (1996), pp 390A-396A.  

 (2) ENDS Report 261 (October 1996), pp 9-11.  

 (3) Science News Vol. 149 (March 9, 1996), p. 149.  

 (4) John J. Ryan, Eric Dewailly, Pierre Ayotte et al.,
Organohalogen Compounds Vol. 30 (1996), pp 247-250.  

Greenpeace Contacts:
Dr. Matthew Bramley, at the IFCS in Ottawa, on (514) 949-0384
(cell) or (514) 933-0021 Mary MacNutt on (416) 597-8408