TORONTO STAR 29-6-98

MONTREAL - Sheila Watt-Cloutier never rode anything fancier than a dogsled while growing up in an Inuit community in the remotest part of northern Quebec. She knew nothing about pollution-spewing chemical plants, cancer-causing pesticides or the dangerously toxic dioxins coming from automobile exhaust pipes and waste incinerators. But the toxic chemicals were coming to her and the 140,000-strong Inuit population in Canada’s Arctic and to the other polar regions at the top of the world. Now, she says, is the time to stop poisoning the planet. And the world has decided it’s time to try.

Delegates from more than 100 countries have gathered in Montreal today to start negotiations for an international treaty to end the use of the world’s 12 worst toxic chemicals. It will not be an easy chore. This inaugural week of talks will begin with the selection of a chairperson to lead the difficult negotiations. The work of reaching a treaty is expected to take at least two years to complete. Even then, it is impossible to predict whether they will succeed in coming up with a legally binding treaty under the United Nations Environmental Program, the agency that is organizing the negotiations. If they do, it may be through the work of John Buccini, director of Environment Canada’s commercial chemicals branch, who is being touted by Canada and delegates from several other governments to take charge of the treaty negotiations. The so-called "dirty dozen" are among the most fearsome of toxic chemicals because of the threat to human and animal health. Because they last so long in the environment before breaking down they are known as POPs: persistent organic pollutants.

The list consists of nine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) used as heat-exchange fluids in electrical equipment, as well as dioxins and furans, the two unwanted byproducts of combustion and chemical manufacturing. PCBs were banned from manufacturing in the 1970s but still exist in some equipment and storage sites around the world. None of the pesticides - DDT, aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex and toxaphene - are used in Canada. The chemicals get around easily, transported in the atmosphere so that pesticides used decades ago in the southern United States, or the DDT making a comeback to fight malaria in South America, land in places like the Canadian Arctic. The chemicals travel - falling out of the sky into lakes and rivers, then evaporating and being picked up again repeatedly by the winds before ending their trek from tropical climates to the polar regions. Even though they have never been used in the Arctic, the chemicals enter the food chain, accumulating in the fat of whales, polar bears, fish and seals, and eventually are consumed by the Inuit, who rely on "country food" as a major part of their diet and heritage. "As we put our babies to our breasts we are feeding them a noxious, toxic cocktail," says Watt-Cloutier, a concerned 44-year-old grandmother and vice-president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference from Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland.

Toxic chemicals could threaten the human population "When women have to think twice about breast-feeding their babies, surely that must be a wake-up call to the world," she said yesterday at the launch of the International POPs Elimination Network. The network is a coalition of 39 environmental groups including activist giants Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, who have spent years trying to ban toxic chemicals. "We need action now to eliminate these chemicals everywhere in the world," said Jack Weinberg, Greenpeace’s senior toxic campaigner from Chicago. Use of the chemicals must come to a halt, not simply be controlled, he said. "It is a futile and self-defeating exercise to put a regime in place to manage them. They must be eliminated. If we get that, we have success. If we don’t, we have failure." Klaus Topfer, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program, described the chemicals as "travellers without a passport," adding it was environmental groups that finally persuaded the world to come together and start these negotiations. "It would have been better to have done this years ago but do not cry about that now," he said.

Like Watt-Cloutier, many had stories to tell. Levels of DDT in the breast milk of Inuit women and mothers in Mexico City are four to five times higher than levels considered safe and there is growing evidence that any exposure may be dangerous. Lizbeth Lopez Carrillo, a researcher with the Mexican National Institute of Health, said her studies showed 6 per cent of babies in Mexico City have unhealthy amounts of DDT in them. Beverly Wright, head of the Deep South Centre for Environmental Justice, described "cancer alley" a 135-kilometre corridor along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., that contains 136 chemical plants and six oil refineries that produce 70 million kilograms of pollution each year. Cancer rates in the poor African-American communities surrounding many of the largest plants are well above the average for the state, said Wright, a sociology professor at Xavier University in New Orleans. A study of children in Oswego, N.Y., on the Lake Ontario shore revealed those with mothers who ate the fish suffered emotional and intellectual problems. The chemicals are insoluble in water but dissolve in fat, so they accumulate in the fatty tissues of fish. Babies as young as 2 days old were hyperactive to sound, had difficulty holding attention and were easily frustrated, said Thomas Darvill, director of the study at the State University of New York.

Research, pioneered in the U.S. by the wildlife fund’s Theo Colborn, has found the toxic chemicals can cause male animals like the alligator and Florida panther to take on female characteristics that result in reproductive disorders. With some tests showing reduced sperm counts in males, low-level toxic chemical exposure could become the most serious threat to future of the human population. (ENDS)