Word: pcbs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Salmon steaks are great sources of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. But according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), salmon can also contain dangerous doses of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), especially if the fish comes from your local grocery store...
When they began finding polar bears with both male and female sex organs, scientists had a suspicion about what might be causing the deformities. The industrial chemicals known as PCBs, which have polluted land and water all over the world, tend to become concentrated in animals' fatty tissues. Seals, which are the bears' main source of food, are essentially blobs of blubber with flippers attached. And because PCBs are thought to mimic estrogen, some experts fear that even low-level exposure could wreak havoc with a bear's reproductive system...
...Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, an international agency based in Norway, has firmed up at least one of the links. In a report released last week, the group says that polar bears, Arctic foxes, harbor porpoises, seals and birds do indeed show significant contamination, not just with PCBs but also with mercury and other toxins carried north by winds and ocean currents...
Like polar bears, the Inuit of northern Canada and Greenland subsist on seals and other fatty Arctic animals and have some of the highest exposures to PCBs. Nobody has yet reported any hermaphroditic children, thankfully, and while the effects of massive PCB exposure can include cancer and retardation, the lower levels in seals and seabirds haven't been definitively linked to any specific ills...
...children at around 15 months (see box). But there are many other conceivable culprits. Researchers at the University of California at Davis have just launched a major epidemiological study that will test the tissues of both autistic and nonautistic children for residues of not only mercury but also PCBs, benzene and other heavy metals. The premise is that some children may be genetically more susceptible than others to damage by these agents, and so the study will also measure a number of other genetic variables, like how well these children metabolize cholesterol and other lipids...