Arctic Thaw May Slow Crackdown On Toxic Chemicals
Date: 05-May-09
Country: NORWAY
Author: Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO - A thaw of the Arctic linked to global warming may slow a drive to get
rid of industrial chemicals that are harming indigenous people and wildlife,
an expert said on Monday.
About 150 nations are meeting in Geneva this week to consider adding nine
chemicals, including pesticides and flame retardants, to a "Dirty Dozen"
banned by a 2001 UN pact partly inspired by worries about the fragile Arctic
environment.
But an Arctic melt may be complicating the clean-up even though levels of
some of the "dirty dozen" chemicals are falling in the region, said
Lars-Otto Reiersen, Executive Secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and
Assessment Programme (AMAP).
"There's some good news and some bad news," he told Reuters.
The shrinking of summer sea ice may allow some of the dirty dozen persistent
organic pollutants (POPs), long trapped under sea ice, to evaporate into the
atmosphere and so spread further around the polar region, he said.
"Climate change may ... delay the impact in the environment of policy
actions against POPs," according to an AMAP report due to be presented in
Geneva on Tuesday. Arctic sea ice shrank in September 2007 to the smallest
since satellite records began.
And some chemicals trapped in glaciers or permafrost may get washed out by a
melt, blamed by the UN Climate Panel mainly on greenhouse gases released by
burning fossil fuels.
LIGHTNING
Lightning may trigger more fires because global warming is likely to make
some forests drier. That could release PCBs, one of the dirty dozen
industrial chemicals used in paints or electric transformers, trapped in
forest soils.
Among dirty dozen chemicals in decline in recent years were the pesticide
DDT and PCBs, but levels of newer chemicals such as brominated flame
retardants were rising.
The 12 have been linked to cancers, birth defects and brain damage. The
Arctic is vulnerable to POPs, swept north by prevailing winds or currents
from Europe, North America and Asia, partly because the chemicals lodge in
fatty tissues.
High levels of POPs have been found in the breast milk of Inuit women. And
animals such as whales, seals or polar bears depend on an extremely fat-rich
diet to help them stay warm.
Reiersen said levels of man-made chemicals in the Arctic were still high
enough to damage people and animals. Oslo-based AMAP is run by the eight
nations with Arctic territory.
Among good news, POPs levels were falling in the blood of some Arctic
peoples. But that was mostly because of a change in diets towards food
bought in shops, away from traditional hunts.
Chemicals on the rise in the Arctic include brominated flame retardants,
used in products such as mattresses or computers, some pesticides and PFOs,
found in goods ranging from electrical equipment to fire-fighting foams,
Reiersen said.
"Some are under discussion in Geneva and some are not," he said, adding that
some flame retardants and PFOs might be banned. Among those not on the list
were the pesticide endosulfan, which AMAP says partly meets criteria as a
POP.
(Editing by Jon Hemming)
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