Pristine Wilderness? Try Toxic Wasteland!

Living
closer to the North Pole than to any city, factory, or farm, the Inuit
appear unscathed by any industrial-age ills. They live much as their
ancestors did, relying on foods harvested from the sea and skills honed
by generations of Inuit.

But as northbound winds carry toxic remnants of faraway lands to their
hunting grounds in extraordinary amounts, their close connection to the
environment and their ancestral diet of marine mammals have left the Arctic’s
indigenous people vulnerable to the pollutants of modern society. About
200 hazardous compounds, which migrate from industrialized regions and
accumulate in ocean-dwelling animals, have been detected in the inhabitants
of the far north.

The bodies of Arctic people, particularly Greenland’s Inuit, contain the
highest human concentrations of industrial chemicals and pesticides found
anywhere on Earth — levels so extreme that the breast milk and tissues
of some Greenlanders could be classified as hazardous waste.

Nearly all Inuit tested in Greenland and more than half in Canada have
levels of PCBs and mercury exceeding international health guidelines. In
newborns’ umbilical cord blood and mothers’ breast milk, average PCB and
mercury levels are 20 to 50 times higher in remote villages of Greenland
than in urban areas of the United States and Europe, according to a 2003
report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, or AMAP, a scientific
consortium created by the eight Arctic nations, including the United States.

from the
Los Angeles Times