It Only Looks Pristine - Arctic Snow Awash In POPs, Other Toxins

[hatrack]

"The words "pristine" and "wilderness" once went together like butter on toast. However, if you link these words in a sentence nowadays -- for example, "Alaska contains miles of pristine wilderness" -- then either you're being ironic or you haven't yet read Marla Cone's "Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic." An environmental journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Cone states, "Guardians of one of Earth's last and largest wildernesses, Arctic people and animals are hundreds of miles from any significant source of pollution, living in one of the most desolate spots on the planet, yet, paradoxically, they are among the planet's most contaminated living organisms. "

"Silent Snow" is the culmination of five years' research and dozens of trips to various Arctic settlements to uproot the cause and effect of this vast Arctic paradox. Cone wanted to know why some Inuit mothers carry such extraordinary loads of PCBs and mercury that their breast milk could be classified as hazardous waste. She wanted to know how it is that the most harmful pollutants get stockpiled in Arctic ice and in the fat cells of Arctic mammals.

EDIT

It is not clear what happened to the Aleutian Islands' sea lion population in the first place, but a local U.S. military base is the likely source of high PCB levels found in local sea otters (38 times more PCBs than sea otters in Southeast Alaska), and so it is not improbable that the local sea lions had also carried a serious load. Regardless of what it was that set off this series of unfortunate events, the results are undeniable; the Aleutians' sea kelp forests will not recover within our lifetime, and they might never. Cone cannot be accused of journalistic hyperbole when stating, "This is a biological regime shift, the consequences of which are astounding. It underscores the fact that everything is connected in ecosystems."

In May 2004, 59 countries signed a treaty to restrict or eliminate the 12 most toxic compounds on Earth. "Yet the United States, despite Bush's earlier assurances, was noticeably absent. Of the eight Arctic nations, only the United States and Russia failed to ratify it." That our leaders wouldn't sign this treaty is embarrassing enough, but as more chemicals are being developed and marketed without sufficient toxicity testing -- as more lawn products, pesticides and flame retardants, to name a few household culprits, are being spewed into the environment -- it becomes increasingly urgent that every single person living in an industrialized nation learn what Greenlander Ingmar Egede already knows."

EDIT

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/RVGA6CO2P51.DTL&type=booksThe

[riverwalker]

1. depleted uranium

they say the DU from Iraq can now be found in every corner of the planet.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_17574.shtml

"American use of DU is "A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time."