Editorial: Toxic chemicals at the North Pole

Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

Scientists have discovered that flame retardants used by U.S. manufacturers of carpet pads and sofa cushions are accumulating in the bodies of polar bears near the North Pole, suggesting that animal food chains in even the earth's most remote regions are affected by chemicals emitted by industrialized countries.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times story, a study by a team of scientists from Canada, Norway, Denmark and the United States shows polybrominated diphenyls, or PBDEs, are among hundreds of chemical compounds carried to Arctic regions by wind and ocean currents. Flame retardants are commonly used in manufacturing furniture, carpet padding, plastics and electronics -- primarily in North America.

As larger animals eat smaller ones, these chemicals, which collect in animals' fatty tissues, grow more concentrated. The PBDE levels in some polar bears were as much as 71 times more concentrated than in the seals the bears ate. And this contamination also carried to the native people who consume these animals, the study says.

Nearly every human being and animal on the planet is contaminated with flame retardants on some level, scientists told the Times. Americans have the highest recorded levels. The United States stopped manufacturing two common types of flame retardants in 2004, after researchers discovered they were accumulating in human breast milk. But unused supplies remain, as do the products that contain them.

Flame retardants are only one type among hundreds of chemicals that have traveled to remote regions, where they have weakened animals' immune systems and altered bone development and sex hormones. And while government officials in the United States and abroad bicker about the economics and fairness of this global warming treaty or that industrial pollution control, an ill wind quietly carries forth these poisons -- slowly, but surely, altering life and the food chain that sustains it.