OntheWilderSide

Minimizing Harm to Human Health Resultant from Persistent Organic
Pollutants Contamination of the Environment: Focus on Akwesasne
(excerpt from) POPS Cancer Hazard website

Contamination of the Global Environment

[The impact of POPs Pollution on all of us…]

During the past 100 years the manufacture and use of certain halogenated hydrocarbons has gradually led to the contamination of the global environment.  These substances are highly resistant to natural break-down processes.  They are also soluble in fats.  Because of these two characteristics, the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) accumulate to the highest levels in organisms at the top of food chains.  Many species of organisms have body burdens of POPs.  Consumption of animal fats is the major exposure route for this group of anthropogenic chemicals.

All peoples of the Earth bear body burdens of POPs, but those who consume relatively large quantities of animal fats have the greatest accumulation of POPs in their fat tissues…

[The specific, increased hazard of POPs Pollution to the people of Akwesasne, an indigenous community, on the Mohawk reserve, located on the St. Lawrence River in New York State…]

The people of Akwesasne, a Mohawk reserve located on the St. Lawrence River East of Massena, New York, have a long history of consuming fish from the St. Lawrence River.  Akwesasne is not only downwind from Great Lakes POPs.  It is downwind also from nearby POPs contaminated waste disposal sites on the ALCOA West property, the former Reynolds Metals property and the former GM Powertrain site.  All three properties contain areas that were classified as Superfund sites…

…First Nations peoples living in the Great Lakes region and downwind from the Great Lakes on the St. Lawrence River receive significant respiratory POPs exposures in addition to the POPs exposures  resultant from consumption of fish and wildlife produced in these ecosystems.

[Strategies to minimize the harm of POPs Pollutants on human health…]

POPs exposure minimization can be accomplished via a number of strategies.  The strategies involving action to reduce the presence of POPs in the environment and food supply include:  banning the production and use of POPs such as brominated flame retardants, clean-up of POPs contaminated sites and establishing a prohibition against the use of animal fats in the feeding of food animals.  POPs exposure minimization can also be accomplished by implementing strategies that motivate exposure avoidance behaviors.  Principal among these strategies is POPs exposure minimization education.  Such education involves providing the general public with a clearly set forth warning describing the POPs health hazard and recommending limited animal fat consumption…

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