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Summary

People in Greenland are more exposed to contaminants from their diet than people in Europe and North America. The cause is that marine traditional food items (fish, seabirds, seals and whales) are much more important in the diet in Greenland, and that at the same time some of these food items contain high levels of contaminants.

Before 2000, some knowledge of contaminant concentrations in the diet of Greenlanders was available, but a study to systematically survey the traditional diet was not initiated until 1999. This study was designed to cover the most important diet items, based mainly on dietary studies conducted in towns and settlements in Central West Greenland. This report presents the contaminant data of the study. Our study has mainly included cadmium, mercury, selenium, polychlorinated bi-phenyls (PCB), dichlorophenyltrichloroethane (DDT), chlordane, hexa-chlorocyclohexanes (HCH), chlorobenzenes, dieldrin and toxaphene in the major animal species and tissues consumed by Greenlanders. A subset of samples was also analyzed for coplanar PCBs, brominated diphenyl ethers, short chain chlorinated paraffins and butyltins.

In general contaminant levels are very low in terrestrial species and in muscle tissue of many marine species. High organochlorine concentrations are typically found in blubber of marine mammals and high metal levels in seabird liver and in liver and kidney of seals and whales.

An evaluation of contaminant intake by Greenlanders points to seal muscle, seal liver, seal kidney, seal blubber and whale blubber as the dominant contributors of contaminants in the traditional diet. Levels in liver from Greenland halibut, snow crab, king eider, kittiwake, beluga and narwhal and kidney of beluga and narwhal are also high but were, with the exception of toxaphene in Greenland halibut liver, not important sources in this study, because they were eaten in low quantities.

In general, contaminant levels in the Greenland environment, including diet items, are lower than in more densely populated and industrialized regions of the Northern Hemisphere. This geographical difference is very pronounced for PCB, coplanar PCBs, DDT, dieldrin, chlordane, total toxaphene, butyl tins, PBDEs and SCCPs, and in most cases mercury levels are also lower in Greenland. For HCH and HCB there appear to be no geographical differences. In contrast, cadmium concentrations are much higher in biota from Greenland than from temperate European marine environments.

In most cases the levels of cadmium and mercury found in this study fall within the range observed in other Arctic regions. This is the case for all the terrestrial species and tissues. For marine invertebrates and fish there are larger variations, but geographical differences are not consistent. In the terrestrial species, organochlorine levels in Greenland in most cases appear to be lower than found elsewhere in the Arctic, while organochlorine levels in the marine species in most cases are within the range of levels found elsewhere in the Arctic.

Full report in pdf. format (999 KB)
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Helle Thomsen

01.11.2007


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