Health care professionals, researchers, tribal representatives, health and environmental advocates, students, health-affected persons, and parents and daycare providers are cordially invited to participate in a teleconference seminar on:

The Global Transport of Persistent Chemicals to the Arctic: An International Problem

TIME: Wednesday, May 28 at 9am Alaska Time.
The call will last one hour.

CALL-IN INFORMATION:
To join this free call and receive the dial-up instructions, please RSVP to Alaska Community Action on Toxics at info@akaction.net or (907) 222-7714.

The North has become a hemispheric sink for pesticides and other industrial chemicals. These toxics collect and accumulate in the animals and plants of the North, persisting in the food web until the contamination becomes extensive.  Current research is now exploring the arrival of toxics to northern latitudes, where they come from, and how long they will remain in the fragile environment that receives them.

The effects of global warming enhance the mobilization and transport of contaminants from both local and far distant sources. Examples of this have been found in the Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea polar bears where levels of the pesticide HCH are among the highest reported in the circumpolar Arctic. Scientists are finding that lindane, one of several hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) isomers, has recently been banned in the US and Canada, is being deposited in the northern latitudes of Alaska and Canada. In addition, evidence in the past 5 years has shown a major increase in the number of halogenated chemicals in Arctic air. According to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, among the currently used pesticides the finding of trifluralinin the Arctic is surprising because of its short atmospheric half-life.

Climate changes in the Arctic, such as temperatures that are rising 5-10 times faster than elsewhere in the world and sea ice that is shrinking 9% each decade, facilitate the collection of these toxics in the air, land and water of the northern latitudes.

Join our speakers on this call to understand why these persistent chemicals are accumulating in the North, though they are not produced and rarely used in the Arctic.
    
 “How could the Arctic, seemingly untouched by contemporary ills, so innocent, so primitive, so natural, be home to the most contaminated people on the planet? I had stumbled on what is perhaps the greatest environmental injustice on Earth.”
- Marla Cone, <u>Silent Snow</u>

Join researchers Pam Miller, who has prepared findings to ban the pesticide lindane for the International Review Committee for the Stockholm Convention; Hayley Hung, who traces the air transport of contaminants to the Arctic; Don Waite, whose work with the currently used pesticides in Canada is useful in understanding how atmospheric transport occurs; and Shawna Larson who can describe through her work at the international level the policies regulating the manufacture and use of contaminants  

To join this free call and receive the dial-up instructions, please RSVP to Alaska Community Action on Toxics at info@akaction.net or (907) 222-7714.

Presenters:
Pam Miller, moderator for this call, is the executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. She has done extensive work on the Stockholm Convention, including research on the chemical lindane and others contaminants under consideration for review by the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

Don Waite, PhD, is a research biologist with Environment Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan. His studies include pesticides, water and atmospheric transport of toxic chemicals. His work is largely on the Canadian prairies and deals primarily with currently-used herbicides. Saskatchewan agriculture pesticides have been found in the Arctic regions with sampling done between 60 and 70 degrees north.

Hayley Hung, PhD manages the air sampling program under the Canadian Northern Contaminants Program. She is also the Principal Investigator on an International Polar Year project, INCATPA that specifically investigates intercontinental transport of pesticides and other POPs to the arctic region.

Shawna Larson has organized indigenous delegations to the Stockholm Convention and has been part of the POPS Review Committee meetings that provide information on the review process for the listing of new chemicals on the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).