Pollution Goes Upstream

Sun., June 28, 1998

Staff

Fisheries research

Scientists pondering the mystery of how industrial and agricultural pollutants infiltrate the ecosystems of isolated Alaska lakes have uncovered a Trojan horse: migrating salmon.

They have found that salmon absorb and accumulate such pollutants as PCBs and DDT during their years at sea, then bring the toxins home in fatty tissues and roe when they return to spawn.

The findings are reported in the March issue of the journal Arctic.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, once were widely used in hydraulic oil and in fluids in electrical transformers. DDT, or dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane, was used as an insecticide. Both substances were banned in the United States in the 1970s, but they degrade slowly, remain in the environment for years and tend to accumulate in the food chain. Both are suspected carcinogens.

The atmospheric spread of such “persistent pollutants” to the Arctic - and to virtually every other part of the world - has been demonstrated in other studies as well.

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