[pf] Long-distance pollutants; organic foods.

· My concern is that we're currently talking about organic food as if it's
clean and faultless, whereas it's only a little better than what was
produced by traditional agriculture before all these "new-fangled"
pesticides and artificial fertilizers became widely available.

· In particular, with POPs (Persistent Organic - i.e. carbon-based -
Pollutants) like dioxin and DDT travelling long distances in a series of
hops by evaporation and condensation, even with organic food there are not
only the old faults, blemishes and bad-spots, but also now POP
contamination. All food seems likely to have traces of these, though I'd
guess that it's more so in highly populated places like Australia, the USA
and Europe where waste incinerators are used, than in New Zealand.

· POPs include the _pesticides_: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin,
heptachlor, mirex and toxaphene; the _industrial_chemicals_:
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hexachlorobenzine (which is also a
pesticide); and the _combustion_byproducts_: dioxins and furans. 

· A wider group including mercury, is called Persistent, Bioaccumulative,
and Toxic Pollutants, PBT. PBTs are associated with adverse human health
effects including the nervous system, reproductive and developmental
problems, cancer, and genetic impacts. (Adverse effects on other animals too.)

· "Bioaccumulative" often refers to fat-soluble chemicals; one of the
earliest widely-known cases was the effect of POPs on top-predators like
eagles in the western USA. From memory, their eggs weren't strong enough,
and they laid fewer of them.

[The item below contains:
  "of dioxin source types identified in the study, six accounted for 90% of
all dioxin emissions in North America, the report's summary stated. Those
were: 
 - municipal solid waste incinerators,
 - backyard trash burning,
 - cement kilns burning hazardous waste,
 - medical waste incinerators,
 - secondary copper smelters, and
 - iron sintering plants.
   The report said of 44,000 emission sources identified in North America
as causing pollution in Nunavut, the United States accounted for 62% ..."
   and:
  "People tend to forget that dioxin that moves from somewhere in the south
to Nunavut, is _being_deposited_all_the_way_en_route_ and the weather
patterns from every source in the Midwest can very well be carried into the
desert states," Barry Commoner told reporters. "The consequence is that
this process is really disseminating dioxin and other pollutants pretty
uniformly over the entire globe from Mexico on up to the Arctic Circle."]

· Much of what I've included above can also be found on:
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/GrNZ-RegionalRept-001015.html
  and
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/GrNZ-RegionalRept-000831.html

· Caveat. Don't rely too much on what I've said; it's only my present
opinion - I haven't checked the sources for reliability, or anything.   D.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8421
  is:

 Dioxins in Arctic Canada linked to south - study

 NEW YORK, October 4 - Cancer-causing dioxins polluting
 Canada's Arctic region have been linked for the first
 time to specific incinerators and smelters thousands of
 miles kms south in the United States, Canada and
 Mexico, a study released yesterday said. 

 The authors said a number of major sources of dioxin
 emissions have been restricted since the research
 undertaken in Nunavut territory for the North American
 Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) from
 July 1, 1996 to June 30, 1997.

 But Greg Block of the Montreal-based organisation said the
 study "demonstrates that we should revise our concept of
 neighbours. In a very real sense, because of the long-range
 atmospheric transport of substances like dioxins, the Inuit
 people of the far north are our neighbours.

 "They receive pollutants, a problem not of their making, that
 can impact on their very way of life and culture."

 Dioxins, which are produced by chemical processes such
 as metal refining, the chlorinated bleaching of pulp and
 paper and burning certain materials, have been linked in
 other studies to cancer, birth defects and neurological,
 reproductive and immune system damage in people and
 animals.

 Researchers for NACEC, a group established under the
 North American Free Trade Agreement, were not required to
 study the health effects on humans and wildlife.

 However, a summary of the study headed by scientist Barry
 Commoner of Queens College, City University of New York,
 stated that "for years, dioxins have been detected in the
 Arctic diet of fish, seal and caribou meat and recently, in
 Inuit mothers' breast milk. The sources of dioxins clearly
 migrate from somewhere else, but where they come from
 has not been known until now."

 CHANGE OF DIETS NOT AN OPTION

 Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of the non-profit Inuit
 Circumpolar Conference Canada group, said at the news
 conference that some have suggested the Inuit change their
 diets to avoid exposure.

 "But for us in the Arctic as a people who are traditionally
 tied to the land, this really is not an option," she said. 
"We have no alternative to traditional food...the environment is
our supermarket and we cannot and will not abandon the land."

 Researchers used the remote Nunavut territory in Arctic
 Canada, which has few local sources of dioxins, to
 demonstrate how pollutants travel to areas far away from
 the source of emissions. Eight locations were identified as
 receptors of dioxins in the territory covering the eastern
 Arctic.

 "People tend to forget that dioxin that moves from the south
 somewhere to Nunavut is being deposited all the way en
 route and the weather patterns from every source in the
 Midwest can very well be carried into the desert states,"
 Commoner told reporters "The consequence is that this
 process is really disseminating dioxin and other pollutants
 pretty uniformly over the entire globe from Mexico on up to
 the Arctic Circle."

 Commoner and his team used an adaptation of a computer
 model developed by the U.S. National Oceanographic and
 Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Called the Hybrid
 Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (Hysplit-4),
 it tracked "puffs" of dioxins in the air released at locations
 in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

 Of the 23 classes of dioxin sources identified in the study,
 only six accounted for 90 percent of all dioxin emissions in
 North America, the report's summary stated. Those were
 municipal solid waste incinerators, backyard trash burning,
 cement kilns burning hazardous waste, medical waste
 incinerators, secondary copper smelters and iron sintering plants.

 The report said of 44,000 emission sources identified in
 North America as causing pollution in Nunavut, the United
 States accounted for 62 percent, Mexico accounted for 30
 percent and Canada for 8 percent. Dioxin sources within
 Nunavut accounted for less than 0.02 percent of the total.

 The study said an estimated two to 20 percent of dioxin
 pollution in Nunavut areas originated outside North America,
 mainly in Japan, France, Belgium and Britain. 

 Story by Grant McCool 

 REUTERS

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sent on to Positive Futures by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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