Word: pcbs
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...More bad news: Salmon (both farmed and, to a lesser extent, caught wild) can contain worrisome levels of PCBs...
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...