Arctic pollution

A while back my daughter was busy with a project concerning the Inuit people, and to give her an idea of what living in the high North looked like, we watched Robert J. Flaherty's epic 1922 documentary Nanook of the North. I was doubly interested because I had been reading about how the Inuit diet (high in animal fats) made cancer and coronary diseases practically non-existent until modern processed foods were introduced.

As unhealthy as processed foods may be, reverting to the traditional diet would probably be suicide. It has been known for quite a while that dioxins and other toxic substances from all over the world are accumulating in the Arctic food web, but now it appears that the decline in Arctic sea ice is causing a direct increase in another toxic substance: mercury.

Last week a paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical research by Son V. V. Nghiem et al., called Field and satellite observations of the formation and distribution of Arctic atmospheric bromine above a rejuvenated sea ice cover. From the press release:

Drastic reductions in Arctic sea ice in the last decade may be intensifying the chemical release of bromine into the atmosphere, resulting in ground-level ozone depletion and the deposit of toxic mercury in the Arctic, according to a new NASA-led study.

The connection between changes in the Arctic Ocean's ice cover and bromine chemical processes is determined by the interaction between the salt in sea ice, frigid temperatures and sunlight. When these mix, the salty ice releases bromine into the air and starts a cascade of chemical reactions called a "bromine explosion." These reactions rapidly create more molecules of bromine monoxide in the atmosphere. Bromine then reacts with a gaseous form of mercury, turning it into a pollutant that falls to Earth's surface.

Bromine also can remove ozone from the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere. Despite ozone's beneficial role blocking harmful radiation in the stratosphere, ozone is a pollutant in the ground-level troposphere.

A team from the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. The team combined data from six NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency satellites, field observations and a model of how air moves in the atmosphere to link Arctic sea ice changes to bromine explosions over the Beaufort Sea, extending to the Amundsen Gulf in the Canadian Arctic.

"Shrinking summer sea ice has drawn much attention to exploiting Arctic resources and improving maritime trading routes," Nghiem said. "But the change in sea ice composition also has impacts on the environment. Changing conditions in the Arctic might increase bromine explosions in the future."

Continue reading here.
Image on the right (found here):

The upper panel shows a bromine explosion observed by scientists at the University of Bremen on March 14, 2008 over Alaska and the Beaufort Sea. The lower panel shows sea ice cover at the time, as measured by NASA's QuikScat spacecraft. Image credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech/University of Bremen/University of Washington.

Dioxins, flame retardants, Bisphenol A, bromine 'explosions', mercury. What a legacy we leave behind...

Comments

[Arcticicelost80]

Recently, scientists discovered that the albedo of the Greenland decreased by 5%

http://bprc.osu.edu/wiki/Greenland_Albedo

Perhaps this is due to the subsidence of the Arctic ice anthropogenic dust.

[Arcticicelost80]

http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2011/greenland-ice-sheet-getting-darker-2
"Dr. Box estimates that darkening of the ice sheet in the 12 summers between 2000 and 2011 would have allowed the ice sheet to absorb an extra 172 quintillion joules of energy, nearly 2 times the annual energy consumption of the United States (about 94 quintillion joules in 2009). In areas where the ice sheet is melting, this additional energy has doubled melt rates, which contributes ice loss to the ocean and sea level rise. In non-melting areas, this extra energy would be enough to raise the temperature of a 5.5-inch-deep layer of snow from 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) to the melting point."

The same can accelerate the melting of sea ice in summer. In a world of increasing the amount of coal burned.

[Kevin McKinney]

"...return to a traditional diet..."

It's my understanding that it's never been completely abandoned. True, modern processed foods are imported in quantity into the Arctic, but the last I heard, 'country food' continues to make up very significant proportions of the diets of Canada's First Nations, including the Inuit. (As in, last I heard--admittedly a while back!--up to 50%.)

For one thing, there is considerable effort and interest in conserving cultural heritages, including foodways, and for another, Southern products tend to be very, very expensive.

[adelady]

traditional diet?

I recall watching a doco about Iceland. They have a whale hunting concession. And they make a big deal of eating the meat. But ......

They've had to limit the intake, especially for children and women. The load of toxic metals is too much for healthy development of foetuses and young children.

[David Penington]

I wouldn't put too much reliance on the "Inuit diet made cancer and coronary diseases practically non-existent" claim.
With a life expectancy after age 4 of about 45, lots of deaths due to "accidents", and negligible medical resources for diagnosis the claim has a very poor data basis.

No tooth decay, yes. But how often did people with chronic conditions die due to accidents/exhaustion in bad weather?

It is very sad that the poles are the recipients of the mercury emitted by our power stations, and of other vaporised substances such as DDT.

[Carol Short]

thank you Neven! there is some stuff i didn't know. thank you for the links for more information. It seems like no place on earth is perfectly clean
(play scrabble)