Did You Know...

"A more sinister example of bad things transported from the First World to developing countries is that the highest blood levels of toxic industrial chemicals and pesticides reported for any people in the world are for Eastern Greenland's and Siberia's Inuit people (Eskimos), who are also among the most remote from sites of chemical manufacture or heavy use. Their blood mercury levels are nevertheless in the range associated with acute mercury poisoning, while the levels of toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biophenyls) in Inuit mother's breast milk fall in a range high enough to classify the milk as "hazardous waste." Effects on the women's babies include hearing loss, altered brain development, and suppressed immune function, hence high rates of ear and respiratory infections...It's because staples of the Inuit diet are whales, seals, and seabirds that eat fish, mollusks, and shrimp, and the chemicals become concentrated at each step as they pass up this food chain." (p.518 from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond)