Copyright 1995 Pacific Press Ltd. The Vancouver Sun
June 10, 1995, Saturday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: INSIGHT; Pg. B4
LENGTH: 814 words
HEADLINE: Some Inuit women fear breast milk is poisonous: Misguided beliefs
about pollution come to light at conference in Vancouver
BYLINE: MARGARET MUNRO; VANSUN
BODY: Arctic women, whose bodies and foods are increasingly contaminated
with pollutants wafting in from the south, are afraid of poisoning their
babies with their breast milk.
Some feed their babies Coffeemate mixed with water -- the only milk
substitute available to them -- in the misguided belief the babies would be
better off.
Several Canadian native children had to be treated for malnutrition, said
delegates at an international conference this week in Vancouver on
persistent chemicals building up in the Arctic.
"That's the kind of extreme thing that can happen," says Henry Huntington
of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an organization representing Inuit
from around the Arctic Circle.
"The most insidious effect of these pollutants is the way they are
undermining the fabric of northern society," says Huntington. "The
traditional foods that are the very root of cultural identity and
well-being are now a source of hazardous material.
"It has the potential for a cultural and social disaster."
For 10 years scientists have been documenting how pesticides and organic
compounds are building up in the Arctic. Many of them were banned in Canada
and the U.S. decades ago but are still used in developing countries. The
chemicals travel north on the winds and ocean currents and accumulate as
they move up the food chain.
Some of the world's highest concentrations of PCBs (polychlorinated
biphenyls) and hazardous pesticides have been found in the tissues of
Arctic people and animals. Breast milk from women in northern Quebec
contain five to seven times more contamination than milk from Canadian
women living in the south.
Health advisories warning native people to limit consumption of
contaminated fish and organs and fatty tissues of whales, walruses, and
seals have prompted many people to change their eating habits. One recent
study found one in seven Inuit in Northern Quebec have shifted their diet
due to concern over the contaminants.
"The first question I get when I go to communities in Alaska is 'Are our
foods contaminated?' " says Huntington, who travels extensively for the
Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
The conference represents the Inuit of Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland.
Carole Mills of the Dene Nation in the Northwest Territories agrees. "Just
the perception that the chemicals are in the food chain leads to changes in
diet and social degradation," she says.
The northerners often end up eating highly-processed southern food that's
an even greater threat to good health.
"In Inuit communities where people live off the land, heart disease and
diabetes are virtually unknown," says Dr. David Stone, who heads the
northern contaminants program for the department of Indian affairs and
northern development. "The Inuits' traditional diet is far healthier even
if it is contaminated."
Mills, environment manager for the Dene, is working on an education
campaign to counteract the fears.
"The benefits of breast-feeding far outweigh the risks," says Mills, who
says scientists who did the original breast-milk studies were irresponsible
in the way they reported the results.
"People in the north read in southern newspapers that their levels were
such and such," she says. "Nobody came in to help them interpret the
results. So these women just stopped breast-feeding and started feeding
their kids dairy whitener and Carnation milk.
"Four of the babies showed up at the health centre with near starvation,"
says Mills, who says scientists have since agreed to discuss research
results with the native people involved before results are made public.
"But it's getting to the point now that people are saying they're tired of
us telling them their food is contaminated," she says. "Some people would
rather not know, it leads to such frustration and anxiety and fear.
"It's hard to tell people not to eat the fat of the animals when that's an
absolute delicacy," continues Mills.
She is anxious to see the world turn off the taps on persistent pesticides
such as DDT. It is still used to kill the mosquitoes that carry malaria in
Africa and Asia.
Mills and other delegates at the conference, that concluded in Vancouver
Thursday, are under no illusions it will be easy.
"If you stopped using DDT millions of people in India would die from
malaria," says Mills, who notes that the World Health Organization is one
of biggest user of the pesticide.
"The crux of the issue is: Do you let millions of people die of malaria in
Asia for the sake of a few thousand people in the north who are worried
about contaminated food?" she says.
Canada and other developed countries must work with poorer countries to
devise safer alternatives, she says. "We can't just tell them to stop, we
have to help provide the money, the science and technology to come up with
alternatives."
GRAPHIC: BILL KEAY/Vancouver Sun/ CHEMICALS FEAR: Carole Mills says the
perception that chemicals are in the food chain leads to changes in diet
[log in to unmask] (Arly Helm, LC)
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