How Persistent Organic Pollutants Threaten the Natural Environment and the Future of Indigenous Peoples


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  • Toxin threat to Inuit food    Researchers have for the first time documented "unacceptable levels" of man-made environmental toxins in the Inuit population of Greenland. There is little doubt the toxins originate from the traditional local diet of polar bears, seals and whales, a diet which so far has been considered one of the healthiest on the planet.

    The report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap) concludes Greenlanders should consider changing their eating habits, to avoid possible health effects like reduced fertility, genetic damage and deformities in children.

    One of the experts behind the report, Doctor Henning Sloth Pedersen, told News Online he considered the findings extremely worrying..... full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2906357.stm

  • POPs in polar bears The newest issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a long story written by LA Times reporter Marla Cone on the impacts of POPs on polar bears. It's available in a PDF file at http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/apr03/polar_bear.html

    Bear Trouble

    Only hundreds of miles from the North Pole, industrial chemicals threaten the Arctic's greatest predator

    A few hundred miles from the North Pole, the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, is one of the world's most important polar bear nurseries. But despite living in remote reaches of the Arctic, many of the bears carry higher doses of some industrial chemicals than nearly any other wild animal tested.

    Writer Marla Cone traveled to Svalbard to report on studies there by the Canadian scientist Andrew Derocher, one of the world's leading polar bear experts. With his colleagues at the Norwegian Polar Institute and elsewhere, Derocher has been researching how the animals are faring, how often they give birth and how many industrial pollutants they carry in their bodies.

  • Environmental Public Health Tracking http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking/default.htm

  • Second National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals
    The Report is the second in a series of publications that provide an ongoing assessment of the exposure of the U.S. population to environmental chemicals using biomonitoring. Biomonitoring is the assessment of human exposure to chemicals by measuring the chemicals or their metabolites in human specimens such as blood or urine.
    http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/

  • The Centers for Disease Control in the US recently did blood and urine samples on 3,800 people in the US on a range of chemicals, including an array of organophosphate pesticides. The resulting report, released in late March of this year, is the National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.
    www.cdc.gov/nceh/dls/report/

  • Office of pesticides Program's Tribal Pesticides Program Council (TPPC) http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/tribes/tppc.htm

    The TPPC will work closely with EPA Offices and Regions, EPA's Tribal Operations Committee (TOC) and other national groups. The general membership of the TPPC currently includes approximately 30 Tribes with EPA pesticide programs and a number of Tribes with pesticide interests. The group is led by an Executive Committee of 11 tribal representatives, elected from the general membership.

    For more information about the TPPC contact:
    Irving Provost, Director of Pesticide Enforcement for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, (605) 867-5624 or e-mail: pepip1@rapidnet.com
    Lillian Wilmore, TPPC Facilitator, (617) 232-5742
    or e-mail: NAEcology@aol.com

    National Tribal Pesticide Program Council
    In September 1999 an EPA cooperative agreement was awarded to Native Ecology Initiative (NEI) to organize a national group -- the Tribal Pesticide Program Council (TPPC). Membership will initially include 30 Tribes that now have EPA pesticide programs and a number of Tribes with pesticide interests. The TPPC will promote and enhance tribal pesticide program development, raise pesticide issues important to Tribes and their people, and deal with policy at the national level. TPPC issues will include pesticide registration, training, enforcement, certification, ground water, disposal and spray drift. The national group gives Tribes a mechanism for communication and organization similar to that provided by the State FIFRA Issues Research and Evaluation Group (SFIREG) for the States.
    Contact Regina Langton, EPA Office of Pesticide Programs, (703) 305-7161 or e-mail: langton.regina@epa.gov
    Resources: from Our Stolen Future www.OurStolenFuture.org

  • New scientific research: bisphenol A (BPA) exposure
    * Exposure to BPA is ubiquitous because it leaches out of polycarbonate plastic, which is used in many consumer products, including food container, used to line metal food cans and also used to coat children's teeth to protect them against cavities. Earlier research, much contested by industry but now confirmed by independent laboratories, has indicated that BPA has deleterious effects at extremely low levels of exposure in the womb.
    * Research indicates that standard toxicology testing using laboratory rats may underestimate the potential for endocrine disruption by bisphenol A because rat livers appear more effective at converting BPA to a metabolite lacking estrogenic activity. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/bisphenola/2001-04elsbyetal.htm
    * New findings from laboratory experiments with animal confirms that low level perinatal exposure to bisphenol A increases weight during adulthood. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/bisphenola/2001-06rubinetal.htm

  • New science:
    Research published in the new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that frog tadpoles are likely to be far more sensitive to pesticides than traditional tests have suggested. This research, by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, reveals an unexpected interaction between a common pesticide, carbaryl, and stress induced in the tadpoles by predators. The interaction can increase mortality by up to four fold and cause heavy tadpole mortality well beneath levels that had been shown to kill tadpoles in traditional tests. www.OurStolenFuture.org/NewScience/wildlife/frogs/2001relyeaandmills.htm
  • Scientific research:
    A Dutch study published in Environmental Health Perspectives finds that children exposed in the womb to higher background levels of PCBs are more likely to suffer from childhood infectious diseases than those experiencing lower background levels. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/immune/2000EHPweisglaskuperusetal.htm
  • Policy:
    UN negotiations on persistent organic pollutants ended successfully over the weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa. The convention calls for ultimate elimination of POPs, with provisions for public health exceptions that allow continued use of DDT in malaria control, for financial assistance to developing nations, and for the use of precautionary considerations in evaluating the addition of new chemicals to the treaty http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Policy/pops/2000-12inc5.htm
  • Policy:
    The EU signals it is preparing to require far more extensive demonstrations of chemical safety. www.OurStolenFuture.org/New/newstuff.htm#euchemicals
  • Press:
    Scientists raise questions about factors contributing to changes in the age of puberty www.OurStolenFuture.org/New/newstuff.htm#pubertyfactors
  • New press
    The New York Times and NPR both carried a story about discovery of high level PCB contamination remaining in a neighborhood in West Glens Falls, NY, despite two large scale clean up efforts. Hundreds of homes may be affected. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/New/newstuff.htm#westglensfalls
  • New policy
    The Canadian Supreme Court confirms the rights of local communities to ban cosmetic uses of pesticides. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/New/newstuff.htm#canadiansc
    A great deal of new material has been published recently on www.OurStolenFuture.org. A sample below, with links. For a full list in chronological order, visit www.OurStolenFuture/new/newstuff.htm

  • It turns out we're not winning the war against cancer: A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reveals that biases built into standard analyses of cancer incidence data were obscuring the fact that rates of breast, prostate and several other cancers continue to increase in the United States. The old methods had falsely indicated that these and other cancer rates were either flat or decreasing.
    http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/human/cancer/2002/2002-1016cleggetal.htm
  • Dutch scientists report that boys exposed prenatally to higher levels of PCBs and dioxin are more likely to show demasculinized play behaviors. Girls and boys exposed to modestly elevated dioxin levels demonstrate more feminized play behaviors. The scientists suggest that that these alterations in play result from endocrine disruption of the development of sex-specific behaviors. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/behavior/2002/2002-09vreugdenhiletal.htm
  • A combined lab and field study of the leopard frog implicates atrazine in widespread feminization of males during tadpole development and metamorphosis. The lab studies confirmed earlier findings from a different amphibian, the African clawed toad, that extremely low levels of atrazine causes significant gonadal abnormalities in male frogs. The field studies demonstrate widespread abnormalities in wild populations of the frog and link them to the geography of atrazine use.. . http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/wildlife/frogs/2003/2003-1023hayesetal.htm
  • Writing in the New Scientist, reporter Andy Coghlan describes intriguing new research indicating that sexual differentiation of the brain begins before the activation of a gene that determines whether an individual develops testes or ovaries. "Till now, the orthodoxy among developmental biologists has been that embryos develop ovaries and become female unless a gene called SRY on the Y chromosome is switched on. If this gene is active, it makes testes develop instead.." New research by a group of California scientists has revealed sexual differences in gene activation in the brain before the SRY gene activity is initiated. This research may help understand the biological basis of "why some people feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex." http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Commentary/News/2002/2002-1019-NS-brainsex.htm
  • A ten-year study of the brain structure reports that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have brains significantly smaller than normal. The size differences are apparent in early childhood, at the earliest ages examined in the study. The authors conclude that ADHD is a biologically-based disorder with clear structural differences, http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/behavior/2002/2002-10castellanosetal.htm
  • Using new analytical methods, a team of German scientists measured bisphenol A in the blood of pregnant women, in umbilical blood at birth and in placental tissue. All samples examined contained BPA, at levels within the range shown to alter development in laboratory experiments with animals. Thus widespread exposure to BPA at levels of concern is no longer a hypothetical issue. It is occurring. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/bisphenola/2002/2002-10schonfelderetal.htm
  • A study by a distinguished group of experts on the effects of diethylstilbestrol, including Arthur Herbst, whose research first revealed DES's human toll, reports that exposure to DES in the womb elevates breast cancer risk beginning in a woman's fifth decade of life. The sample size remains small, because DES use was most prevalent in the '50s and '60s and therefore exposed "DES daughters" are only now reaching the age when breast cancer incidence rises substantially. Nevertheless, this new study clearly indicates that DES daughters over 40-yrs old are at greater risk to breast cancer than unexposed women of comparable age. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/human/cancer/2002/2002-10palmeretal.htm
  • New results from scientific studies of people exposed to dioxin during the 1976 chemical plant explosion in Seveso, Italy, reveal that immune system suppression by dioxin continues on at least 2 decades following initial exposure. Higher levels of dioxin correlate strongly with lower levels of a key immune system defense component, immunoglobulin G. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/immune/2002/2002-0930baccarellietal.htm
  • Research at the University of Wisconsin reveals that very low doses of a commercial mixture of lawn chemical herbicides including 2,4-D causes fetal loss in mice. The scientists who conducted the study obtained the herbicides by simply going to a local hardware store and buying a common brand. Tests are usually conducted on pure components of such brands, instead of the actual mixtures sold. Tests with the pure components had indicated exposure at levels used in these experiments should not have caused effects. In fact, the lowest level used in the experiments, which caused significant fetal loss, was one-seventh the level allowed by EPA in drinking water. These results indicate that mixtures must become a focus of regulatory testing for toxicology, and that current standards are not adequate. http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/reproduction/2002/2002-0917cavieresetal.htm
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Webpage on their persistent, bioaccumulative and toxics initiative. includes federal agency strategy, links to federal agencies addressing PBTs, and tool box.
  • U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
  • Greenpeace International Toxics Campaign Includes copies of key toxics reports, and links to program initiatives on cleaner production, chlorine industry, health effects, PVC in toys, shipbreaking, Basel trade ban.
  • International POPs Elimination Network home page: links activists and researchers working on POPs issues related to the UNEP global POPs treaty process and other regional and national policies.
  • U.N. Environment Programme, POPs Treaty
  • World Wildlife Fund: Global Toxic Initiative
  • International Council of Chemical Associations

  • Washington Toxics Coalition - Providing Solutions that Prevent Pollution ... by identifying and promoting alternatives to toxic chemicals. We use research, grassroots organizing, publications and presentations, conferences, and our Toxics Hotline to provide reliable information about preventing pollution in homes, schools, workplaces, agriculture, and industry. http://www.watoxics.org/

  • "The Chemical Papers"
    MOYERS "TRADE SECRETS" SPECIAL SPARKS GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGN
    * A recent Bill Moyers PBS special about the "Chemical Papers" has roused a national coalition of activists to combat the secrets and lies of the chemical industry. Learn how you can organize to protect your community from toxins and hold the chemical giants accountable for their practices. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10600
    * This information comes from the PBS website for Trade Secrets: http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/
    * TRADE SECRETS is available on video from Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Copies for educational use include public performance rights for $149.00. Home videos are available for private use at a price of $29.95. For further information, or to place an order, call 1-800-257-5126, or visit the website at www.films.com.

 
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