So put down the Ambien, Prosaic, Viagra and crotch-shots on RNN/Faux News Kool-Aid and turn off the television, because the melting polluted Arctic ice is allowing deadly chemicals to seep out, including the pesticides DDT, lindane and chlordane, as well as PCBs.
The chemicals seeping out as temperatures rise include the pesticides DDT, lindane and chlordane as well as the industrial chemicals PCBs and the fungicide hexachlorobenzene (HCB). All of these are know as persistent organic pollutants (Pops), and are banned under the 2004 Stockholm convention.
Pops can cause cancers and birth defects and take a long time to degrade. Over past decades, the low temperatures in the Arctic trapped volatile Pops in ice and cold water. But scientists in Canada and Norway have discovered that global warming is freeing the Pops again. They examined measurements of Pops in the air between 1993 and 2009 at the Zeppelin research station in Svalbaard and Alert weather station in northern Canada.
After allowing for the decline in global emissions of Pops, the team showed that the toxic chemicals are being remobilised by rising temperatures and the retreat of the sea ice, which exposes more water to the sun. The scientists’ work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
