THE INUIT OF BROUGHTON ISLAND
As was noted in an earlier paper, synthetic chemicals concentrate in the fat of the consumer. The Arctic cod, which is
not at the top of a predator food chain, will have a concentration of up to 48 million times that found in the surrounding
water. (This however is still less than the levels found in the salmon of the Great Lakes, as the Arctic waters are still
less polluted.)
The seal eats cod, on an ongoing basis, and further concentrates the host of chemicals. At this point, PCB is now eight
times the concentration of that in the cod. It is now 384 million times that of the surrounding water.
The seals are eaten by the polar bear and now the PCB is concentrated to 3 billion times that of the Arctic water.
The female polar bear can rid herself of some of these manmade chemicals. She innocently feeds them to her offspring in
her highly nutritious and highly polluted milk.
Now there is a group of Inuit on Broughton Island, off of Baffin Island, that have the same problem as the polar bear.
Canadian officials have concluded that the infants in this society take in seven times more PCBs than an infant in southern
Canada.
The following paragraph was taken from a Canadian government web-site on the state of aboriginal people.
'Aboriginal people, particularly those who follow a traditional lifestyle, are susceptible to environmental contaminants;
exposure to heavy metals such as mercury and to organic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is common. A
recent study involving Inuit women in northern Quebec showed that their breast milk had a total PCB concentration seven times
greater than the concentration in the breast milk of women of European descent living in southern Quebec. High levels of
mercury have been found in some native people in northern Ontario and Quebec. A study of exposure to trace metals through
traditional food sources of Inuit people in a Baffin Island community concluded that the mean daily intake of mercury was
much higher than the mean daily intake for all Canadians.'
The officials have warned these "PCB people" (as they are known as by other Inuit) that the food they are eating is
contaminated. This warning means little as there is no other food source. The little money that they did make by selling
fish for southern consumption dried up when the purchaser found that it was too contaminated. So they continue to eat what
is available.
The culture of these poor people is threatened by something incomprehensible to them and to me. They are sixteen hundred
miles from the industry of southern Ontario and even further from the pollution of Europe and yet the contaminates in these
people is higher than anything recorded in any population, anywhere in the world.
Other Inuit will not associate with them. They are shunned; other Inuit men will not marry the women within the group.
One woman attempted to feed her newborn child with a formula of her own making. In her effort to protect her child from
the contaminates in her own milk, she fed the child Coffee-mate and water. The child was hospitalized as one would well
imagine.
This is an extreme example I will admit, but it is getting close to being the reality everywhere. 'In six months of breast
feeding, a baby in North America and Europe gets the maximum recommended lifetime dose of dioxin, which rides through the
food web like PCBs and DDT. The same breast feeding baby gets five times the allowable daily dose of PCBs set by
international health standards for a 150 pound adult.'
There is no place left to hide from our madness; even at a mother's breast.
There is a first step that must be taken to end this madness. We must push, with every fiber of our being, for electoral
reform. Proportional Representation is overdue in North American politics.
I am available to discuss this paper with anyone interested.
Next week we will look at Proportional Representation.
Have a nice day.
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