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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-arctic18nov18,0,523500.story?coll=la-home-world 



 High Contamination Reported in Arctic Russians


   Natives more dependent on local wildlife for food are exposed to
   record levels of pollutants.

By Marla Cone
Times Staff Writer

November 18, 2004

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.

"We are poisoned and so are our children," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, 
president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents Arctic 
people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Chukotka. This research "really 
arms us, strengthens us, to be able to move forward and push toward 
global action on these very important issues for the indigenous people 
of the Arctic."

About 2 million people inhabit the Russian Arctic; about 200,000 are 
native to the region. The report says the 16,000 people of Chukotka, in 
northeastern Russia, "are the main concern with respect to human health 
risks." They eat marine mammals, whose blubber stores toxic compounds.

"In the areas of the Russian Arctic studied, practically every 
indigenous family consumes a significant amount of traditional food," 
the report says. "Families with low incomes rely to a greater extent on 
the local, fat-rich traditional diet. As a consequence, low-income, 
indigenous families are at greater risk of exposure."

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.

The report recommends that Russians develop a strategy to lower exposure 
without endangering traditional cultures and reducing already inadequate 
food supplies. For example, the Inuit of Canada are advised to eat more 
fish, which is less contaminated than beluga or seal.

The findings will be presented next week to ministers of the 
eight-nation Arctic Council.

Lars-Otto Reiersen, of the Arctic monitoring program's secretariat, 
based in Norway, said industrialized nations where the chemicals 
originate had "a moral duty" to find solutions. "We cannot send the dirt 
to our neighbors and close our eyes," he said. "Reductions in use and 
emissions will have to be done at the source."

Many of the chemicals, including PCBs, DDT and mirex, have already been 
banned in the U.S. and most other industrialized nations. But they are 
still leaking from old equipment, stockpiles and contaminated fields and 
waters, and once they reach the Arctic, they remain there for decades.

The Stockholm Convention, an international treaty that went into effect 
in May, restricts 12 of the chemicals, dubbed the "Dirty Dozen," and 
implements cleanup projects. U.S. officials have not ratified the treaty 
because they disagree with the procedure for banning compounds.



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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times