A Land Where Males Are Rarely Born

For thousands of years, the Inuit people have overcome many obstacles to preserve their unique lifestyle and culture. They hone incredible hunting and fishing skills and depend on marine life to support their alimentary needs. We might relax in front of our televisions with a microwaveable factory-made dinner, while arctic natives catch seal, whales, caribou, and walrus for their meals. We assume that this freshly caught meat is safe and natural, but ironically enough, that is not the case. Televisions and other electronic equipment that we produced over thirty years ago are now causing toxic chemical compounds to seep into the marine life food chain and effect people that depend most on natural resources. Our industrialized society may feel millions of miles away from these tightly knit villages and untouched land, but as time progresses, we are closer than we think.
Our planet’s natural currents of air and water flow the strongest towards the North Pole and Arctic Circle from more southern latitudes. As a “focus for major atmospheric, riverine, and marine pathways,” the Arctic is “a potential contaminant storage reservoir and/or sink” (Native Science). Contaminants, such as sulfur, nitrogen compounds, PCBs, and radionuclides flow from countries, namely the United States and the majority of Eurasia, to the Arctic and remain there. Our past is finally catching up with us. During the prime era for atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union handled toxic waste and experiments very poorly. Accidents arose in the Kara, Barents, and Laptev seas of Russia. Among these disasters, the devastating Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident occurred. Had this happened “only a few weeks earlier...dangerous levels of radioactive contaminants would have been concentrated over Alaska and Northern Canada,” due to the seasonal atmospheric state (www.nativescience.org). Simply by chance, we have dodged even harsher consequences than those that we experience now, but that does give us any reason to relax about toxin pollution and our future.
PCBs spoil our earth and remain one of the many culprits responsible for a majority of Arctic mammal health issues (humans are mammals too, after all). PCB stands for polychlorinated biphenyl, mixtures of up to 209 individuated chlorinated compounds. They can exist as odorless and oily liquids, solids, and gasses difficult to detect. Why, then, would anybody use them? Before 1977, we hardly knew of their effects on the population. Industries produced them as insulators for every day electrical equipment. After we stopped producing these biologically insoluble compounds, they still remained in the environment. Now, countless health problems such as cancer, mental defects, skin conditions, liver damage, etc. have emerged and grown within the human population.
Alaska natives are noticing strange, seemingly unexpected occurrences within their natural surroundings. Birds, fish, and other mammals develop more tumors, species disappear and change migration patterns, the tea plants are not as green, the sky is not as blue as it once was, and thick seal skins are becoming almost see-through. Is this the result of endocrine system disruption? And is this disruption the result of contamination? Of course not. Statistical evidence demonstrates strong associations among these variables, but so what?
Well, here is an even more striking example of what is happening to mammals and their/our endocrine systems. As mentioned above, Inuit people rely on their natural local food sources for the majority of their daily nutrition. Some have no other choice but to utilize the skills carried on from their ancestors to provide for themselves and their communities. The fish they caught were once fresh and healthy, but now they are infested with PCBs from the water and air. When it comes down to survival, though, the choice is to either eat what has been caught or not eat anything at all. Hard decision if you are living in the cold, barren Arctic Circle, huh?
Therefore, pregnant women are ingesting PCBs from the marine food chain that they depend on for nourishment. As the PCBs enter the blood stream, these compounds pretend to be hormones in the endocrine system, such as estrogen and testosterone. Therefore, high blood levels of PCBs result in a high percentage of boys born. Higher amounts of PCBs in the blood system result in more baby girls. This higher amount constitutes any level above four micrograms per liter of blood. Since the average ratio of birth gender is 1.1 boys per 1 girl, the Alaskan native average of 2 girls per 1 boy demonstrates not only a presence of PCBs in the mother’s bloodstream, but an extremely high one. Now, there are whole villages with only female children. Not only do PCBs effect the gender ratio, but they hinder prenatal and early intellectual development of the child. Our future is dwindling here, and it is our fault.
Thankfully, through the Stockholm Convention, countries have made an international agreement to reduce “the production and use and discharge of persistent organics,” striving to regulate and clean up PCBs. Although Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have implemented guidelines regarding PCBs and other chemicals, such as mercury, most Inuit populations and a significant proportion of several other populations exceed these guidelines. Will this situation improve at all? Author Kai Erikson provides great optimism and remarks, “People of all races are likely to work as a community to cope with life and property lost as a result of natural disasters. Disasters involving toxic substances… cause people to lose faith in the ability of the environment to sustain them.” From this topic arises other broader questions. What if the Inuit culture dies out because of our pollution? What if there are other toxic chemical compounds floating around that we use daily? In my opinion, the future generation of Inuit women should copulate with the exponentially growing amount of Chinese males (China maintains a gender imbalance in favor of males due to political and societal factors). Then, everything, including the life threatening amounts of harmful chemicals in the Arctic and extinction of species, will be okay.
Go to www.nativescience.org to find out more!