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Arctic Ecosystems, Wildlife and Man: Threats from Persistent Organic Pollutants and Mercury

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Arctic One Health

Abstract

Exposure to long-range transported industrial chemicals such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and other pollutants such as mercury pose a risk to the overall health and populations of Arctic wildlife and the local Inuits. Since local communities are relying on the same marine food web as marine mammals in the Arctic, it requires a One Health approach to understand the holistic ecosystem health including that of the environment, animals and humans. Given the long marine food chains and the biomagnification of most contaminants, top predators such as Inuits, polar bears and toothed whales end up with extremely high exposures posing risks of effects. Here we give a brief overview of the current knowledge on POPs and mercury in the Arctic environment, animals and humans and a discussion on adverse health effects in relation to other stressors such as climate change and zoonotic infectious diseases. Finally, we discuss possible population-level effects of these anthropogenic pollutants and future perspectives for wildlife-human interactions in the Arctic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Ecoscience, Arctic Research Centre (ARC), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Christian Sonne, Bjørn Munro Jenssen & Rune Dietz

  2. Ecotoxicology and Wildlife Health Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, National Wildlife Research Centre, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Robert James Letcher

  3. Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Bjørn Munro Jenssen

  4. Department of Arctic Technology, University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway

    Bjørn Munro Jenssen

Authors
  1. Christian Sonne
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  2. Robert James Letcher
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  3. Bjørn Munro Jenssen
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  4. Rune Dietz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Sonne .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT The Arctic University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Morten Tryland

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Sonne, C., Letcher, R.J., Jenssen, B.M., Dietz, R. (2022). Arctic Ecosystems, Wildlife and Man: Threats from Persistent Organic Pollutants and Mercury. In: Tryland, M. (eds) Arctic One Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87853-5_6

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