Beluga whales and sofas: same battle ...
FIRE RETARDANTS !
Daniel Martineau
The author
is professor of pathology at the Faculté de médecine vétérinaire
Université de Montréal
Université de Montréal
“A consumer worries because his new sofa contains fire retardants” and “Burned airs”, those were the titles of two recent reports on Canadian TV (March 2014). They reminded me of uncomfortable memories: I have
worked on the health and contaminants of beluga whales living in the
St Lawrence River in Quebec for many years. My collaborators at Fisheries and
Oceans Canada discovered that these whales contain PBDEs, which are flame retardants widely used in foam furniture, electronics and computer cases (for
that reason, these compounds have become an important part of house dust; they are now suspected of inducing thyroid disorder in house cats !).
Beluga whales share with us a very similar biology. Like us, they are mammals, with approximately the same lifespan. Like many North Americans, they are fat and at the top of the food chain (even though a chain does not have a top !). The female bears and nurses its newborn for approximately the same time a woman does. And like women, female beluga transfer to their newborn through their milk a sizable part of their contaminants every time that the young suckles. Because of these and other biological similarities, beluga whales are affected like us by viruses, bacteria and contaminants. In addition, all we dump on land, including synthetic resistant compounds never seen in nature before, like PBDEs, invariably end up in water. And finally these fire retardants, found in the sofa mentioned above, accumulate in the animals that live in that water. Thus, beluga and fish are truly environmental sentinels (see «One health, one medicine », a concept emerging in the curriculum of American and Canadian veterinary schools).
Beluga whales share with us a very similar biology. Like us, they are mammals, with approximately the same lifespan. Like many North Americans, they are fat and at the top of the food chain (even though a chain does not have a top !). The female bears and nurses its newborn for approximately the same time a woman does. And like women, female beluga transfer to their newborn through their milk a sizable part of their contaminants every time that the young suckles. Because of these and other biological similarities, beluga whales are affected like us by viruses, bacteria and contaminants. In addition, all we dump on land, including synthetic resistant compounds never seen in nature before, like PBDEs, invariably end up in water. And finally these fire retardants, found in the sofa mentioned above, accumulate in the animals that live in that water. Thus, beluga and fish are truly environmental sentinels (see «One health, one medicine », a concept emerging in the curriculum of American and Canadian veterinary schools).
By studying
the diseases and contaminants of beluga and fish in the St Lawrence, my plan,
shared by my collaborators, was simple: we would publish the results of our
findings in scientific journals and then to the media. At that point, the political
authorities would ban these compounds. Thus we would have contributed
positively to public and environmental health and of course to the conservation of this population of beluga whales. At least this is what was assumed. The
first part of these objectives was achieved (although there is no follow up). The
second part of the plan did not run so smoothly...
PBDEs concentration in the tissues of St Lawrence beluga whales increased exponentially between 1988 and 1999 as reported by my collaborators at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and others in a 2004 paper. It warned «This study confirms that the growing use of PBDEs as flame retardants has resulted in rising contamination of Canadian aquatic environments. Additional studies are needed to assess the toxicological implications of the PBDE tissue levels found in St Lawrence Estuary belugas”.A short time after, Peter Ross, an internationally recognized expert at Fisheries and Oceans in B.C., reported that concentrations in the tissues of killer whales living along the B.C. coast were so high that these animals were litterally fireproof. Here our original plan really really got off track. Ross was fired by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 2012. At the same time, all toxicologists at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (yes throughout Canada) had to choose between being fired and quitting toxicology.
The end result is that while importing PBDEs-containing product is still not banned in Canada (it is subject to severe restrictions in the rest of the developed world), attempting to detect these compounds (and any other contaminant) in the tissue of marine mammals or fish is now “banned” for Fisheries and Oceans Canada employees. The last toxicologist quit Fisheries and Oceans Canada April 2014.
