Pure as the driven snow? No longer: Half of all Inuit women in the Canadian Arctic eat food containing toxic pollutants at levels above those allowed by international standards. Chlordane (a type of pesticide) levels in their breast milk are 10 times higher than in southern Canada. Not good for their babies at all. And the seals, whales, polar bears and fish are contaminated too by nasties like PCBs and heavy metals [1]. A wide variety of toxins turn up in what seem like clear and pure Arctic lakes due to 'distillation' from pesticide-laden soil in the tropics. The horrible stuff (the best known is toxaphene) later gets dumped by polluted rainfall in the Arctic because the winds and clouds blow it there from the hot tropics. This means the fish are contaminated and, of course, the people who eat them [2].

1. New Scientist, 26/9/98, 13; 2. New Scientist, 22/7/95, 7