Tainted country food still safe to eat: Report

ANNETTE BOURGEOIS

Traditional foods in the North are contaminated, but people shouldn’t refrain from eating them.

That’s the message contained in a federal report released this week on arctic contaminants.

The Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment took six years to complete and confirms that meat from seals, walruses, caribou and polar bears does contain contaminants. But according to the report’s findings, the level of contamination poses no immediate threat to human health.

The report concludes that the benefits of eating country foods still far outweigh the risk of exposure to any contaminants they may contain.

“This report tells us that, while contaminants are certainly an issue of concern in the Arctic, the food on which Inuit depend is still safe to eat,” said Mary Sillett, president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, one of four northern aboriginal groups involved in the federal government’s Northern Contaminants Program.

The main sources of pollution in the northern food chain are pesticides, heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which originate in Europe, Asia and North America. These pollutants travel in the atmosphere and by way of ocean currents to the Arctic.

Eastern arctic caribou

Industrial pesticides and PCBs accumulate mainly in the fatty tissues of marine mammals and in fish livers. Though concentrations of these pesticides are low among land animals, somewhat higher levels have been detected in polar bears and in caribou of the eastern Arctic.

The report indicates that human activity in recent years has increased the level of metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury in the environment, though these metals also occur naturally in northern rocks and soil.

Elevated levels of mercury have been detected in freshwater fish while cadmium has been found in caribou and marine mammals.

The report’s authors point out that smokers are exposed to much higher levels of cadmium than is found in country food.

Scientists say eating country foods poses no short-term health risk, but admit the long-term effects are inconclusive. There’s also a concern that unborn children may be at risk of exposure to contaminants that have built up in the mother’s body.

Still, country foods remain the most plentiful and natural source of essential vitamins and minerals in the North.

“From studies elsewhere in Canada and the world, it has been found that several adverse health effects may occur if people stop eating country food,” the report concludes.

Food cost also considered

Health problems among aboriginal people, including obesity, anemia, heart disease and lower resistance to infection, have been linked to the shift away from traditional diets.

But country foods are not only important to northerners for their nutritional value ­ most families simply can’t afford to eat properly on store-bought food.

In some areas, such as Sanikiluaq, people eat country foods more than three times a day. In the Baffin area, between 50-90 per cent of residents eat country food at least once a day.

Researchers at the Centre of Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment discovered that the price of one kilogram of pork in a northern community was $12.10, whereas the same amount of caribou is 29 cents. They estimate it would cost each aboriginal household about $10,000 annually to replace country food with imported southern food.

Most of the contaminants found in the Canadian Arctic have already been banned at home and the federal government is lobbying other countries to follow the example.

Ottawa began formal negotiations under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in January to tighten controls on transboundary pollutants, including dioxins, pesticides and PCBs. An agreement is expected to be signed early next year.

Now, after pouring nearly $100 million into the six-year Arctic Environmental Strategy, Ottawa says it’s drawing its contaminants study to a close.

That worries Sillett, who believes it’s critical to continue monitoring contaminant levels in the Arctic.

“Inuit and the Arctic ecosystem on which we depend deserve no less,” she said.