Arctic Thaw May Slow Crackdown On Toxic Chemicals

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 5 May 09;

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)