20 Jun
2006 - Despite its remote location… The Arctic
has become the world’s toxic sink. Air and water
currents transport hazardous chemicals from industrialised
areas like the EU to the Polar Regions, where
they accumulate in the environment and the bodies
of its inhabitants. As a leading chemical producer,
the EU must assume its responsibility in the situation
and take immediate action to reduce the chemical
footprint in the Arctic and everywhere else.
This is the essential message
that a delegation of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples
carried to the Members of the European Parliament
in Brussels.
During the conference, organised
by the Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat
and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme
with the support of WWF, scientists such as Dr
Jon Øyvind Odland from the University of
Tromso in Norway, denounced the fact that already
banned chemicals but also new contaminants are
being found in the bodies of Arctic Peoples, mainly
due to ingestion of chemicals from traditional
food. As he explains, "until now we have
very scarce research on human health effects of
the new contaminants. However, that doesn’t stop
industry from producing and spreading them without
any control".
In fact, results from the first
study testing people living in the Arctic for
newer, current-use chemicals, show that brominated
flame retardants (BFRs) and perfluorinated chemicals
(used in household items such as televisions,
computers and cooking pans) were detected in the
blood of all 20 pregnant women tested in the northern
town of Bodø, Norway, and in Taimyr, a
town in the Russian Northern Siberia where there
are no local sources or uses of these pollutants.
Furthermore, Dr. Odland’s observations in far
East Russia show that “there is a positive correlation
between the amount of PCBs found in the mothers
and the number of baby girls being born, thus
altering the natural balance in that region”.
As Rune Fjellheim, Executive
Secretary of the Indigenous Peoples Secretariat
(IPS) says, "the lives of Arctic Indigenous
Peoples are being radically impacted by chemicals
that end up in the Arctic. Overall, these chemicals
are neither produced nor used by us. We do not
see their benefits, instead we suffer only their
harmful effects on our health, cultures and ways
of life". An opinion shared by Alona Yefimenko,
technical advisor to IPS, who insists on the risk
that "Arctic Indigenous Peoples may have
to turn away from traditional foods because they
are becoming so heavily contaminated. In some
regions, the body burden of chemicals such as
brominated flame retardants is expected to double
every four or five years".
After hearing the evidence,
Lena EK, Swedish Member of the European Parliament
that hosted the event, said “we all believed this
was an untouched area… but we now see what’s happening
and it’s really terrifying”.
But hazardous chemicals do not
only have an impact on the life of the Arctic
Peoples but also on the many species that live
there. As Julian Woolford from WWF’s International
Arctic Programme outlines, “marine mammals eat
contaminated invertebrates, fish, birds and other
mammals, thus increasing the accumulation of chemicals
up the food chain. These chemical exposures in
arctic wildlife have been linked to disturbances
of the hormone and immune systems, vitamin A levels
and altered behaviour”.
According to Dr Jon Øyvind
Odland, "the Arctic is the predictor of global
processes, so the situation in the Arctic now
is a warning of what may happen to the European
Union and other regions in the future". Participants
in the conference agree that REACH, the future
EU chemicals legislation, offers hope to reduce
the presence of toxic chemicals in the Arctic
and everywhere else, by identifying and phasing
out the most hazardous chemicals. But it can only
achieve this if it is substantially strengthened.
As Alona Yefimenko from the
Indigenous Peoples Secretariat says "we hope
that the EU will take the lead and will bring
in a new chemicals legislation that is a benchmark
to which other governments around the world should
aspire".
