Radio Script
1998

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Aleutian Pollution
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STORY: The Aleutian Islands stretch 1,500 miles from southwest Alaska across the North Pacific. Far from polluting industries, it seemed like the perfect place to find sea otters and other wildlife free of pollution and contaminants. Jim Estes is a wildlife biologist with the University of California-Santa Cruz.

ESTES: "This is something we would have never expected to find. Until we looked, I would have imagined that a place like the Aleutian Islands was about as clean as any place left on Earth."

Instead, he found high levels of two toxic chemicals that have been banned in the United States for more than 20 years. Industrial chemicals known as PCBs showed up in Aleutian otters at levels twice as high as those in California otters. And the pesticide DDT showed up in high levels in Aleutian shellfish and bald eagles.

Estes says the PCBs might come from nearby military bases used during World War II. He says the most likely sources for DDT are farm fields in Asia. Ocean currents or migrating sea birds might have carried pollution to the Aleutian Islands, where it became established in the food chain.

ESTES: "These problems of contamination are really global in magnitude. The solution to managing them, whatever it might be, is not a small-scale localized problem."

Estes says the discovery of contaminants in this remote region shows that no place can escape the harmful effects of pollution.

OUTRO: For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Robert Hannon.