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Arctic Contamination Assessment Study
NOAA has conducted environmental research and monitoring in the U.S. Arctic since 1974 when the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP) was established through an interagency agreement between NOAA and the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior. OCSEAP produced a mammoth record of research and other data products, culminating in a 74-volume series of OCSEAP Final Reports and a bibliography consisting of over 4,000 entries.
Since mid-1992, NOAA and other agencies and nongovernmental organizations have focused on the need to develop a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to understanding the complex issue of Arctic contamination. As part of these efforts, two cruises were organized in 1993 in the Beaufort and Bering Seas to investigate the present status of U.S. Arctic contamination.
The National Status and Trends (NS&T) Program has determined the levels and temporal trends of contaminants (e.g., toxic trace elements, pesticides, PAHs, and chlorinated industrial chemicals) for sediment and biota (mussels, demersal fish) at sites in Alaska (e.g., the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, and Beaufort Sea). The program also has described the spatial distribution and scale of contamination from radionuclides in surficial sediment and selected biota in the Arctic, including species that are harvested for subsistence use (anadromous fish, marine mammals, seabirds and caribou).
Using statistical records of subsistence harvests in the North Slope Borough and radionuclide activity in specific tissues, NS&T results demonstrate a very small radiation dose from typical human consumption of marine foods. These results were instrumental in alleviating public concerns about the quality of traditional food resources in the region following disclosure of widespread dumping of radioactive wastes in the Arctic seas by the former Soviet Union. In addition, reports are being prepared on the levels of radionuclides and other contaminants in the Beaufort Sea, the Russian Far East, and the eastern Bering Sea, and on the interpretation of the atomic ratio of plutonium isotopes to identify the most likely sources of radionuclides in the U.S. Arctic.
National Status and Trends staff have played a leading role in synthesizing and reporting on data on PAH contamination in the Arctic. A comprehensive review chapter on the subject is included in the State of the Arctic Environment, which was published under the auspices of the International Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
Project Partners
Office of Naval Research
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Texas A&M University 's Geochemical
and Environmental Research Group
Artic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP)
University of Alaska Fairbanks
References
AMAP, 1996. "AMAP Interim Report to the Third Ministerial Conference,
Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, Inuvik, Canada", AMAP Report
96:1, March, 1996.