Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

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Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

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Jun 24, 7:35 PM (ET)

By ARTHUR MAX

AGADIR, Morocco (AP) - Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote

reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and

heavy

metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger

not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on

seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum,

chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart

gun

from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial

waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans

thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

" These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They

certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the

ocean, " said biologist Payne, founder and president of Ocean

Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the

whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish - the types health

experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid - typically have levels of

about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the

report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels

than the skin samples contained.

" The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most

of which have been released by human beings, " Payne said in an interview on

the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb

the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses

her calf. " What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation

of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby, " he said, and each generation

passes on more to the next.

Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary

source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

" You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single

greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this

will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on, " he said.

Payne called his group's $5 million project the most comprehensive report

ever done on ocean pollutants.

U.S. Whaling Commissioner Medina informed the 88 member nations of

the whaling commission of the report and urged the commission to conduct

further research.

The report " is right on target " for raising issues critical to humans as

well as whales, Medina told The Associated Press. " We need to know much more

about these problems. "

Payne, 75, is best known for his 1968 discovery and recordings of songs by

humpback whales, and for finding that some whale species can communicate

with each other over thousands of miles.

The 93-foot Odyssey, a sail-and-motor ketch, set out in March 2000 from

San Diego to document the oceans' health, collecting pencil-eraser-The

93-foot Odyssey, a sail-and-motor ketch, set out in March 2000

After more than five years and 87,000 miles, samples had been taken from

955 whales. The samples were sent for analysis to marine toxicologist

Wise at the University of Southern Maine. DNA was compared to ensure the

animals were not tested more than once.

Payne said the original objective of the voyage was to measure chemicals

known as persistent organic pollutants, and the study of metals was an

afterthought.

The researchers were stunned with the results. " That's where the shocking,

sort of jaw-dropping concentrations exist, " Payne said.

Though it was impossible to know where the whales had been, Payne said the

contamination was embedded in the blubber of males formed in the frigid

polar regions, indicating that the animals had ingested the metals far from

where they were emitted.

" When you're working with a synthetic chemical which never existed in

nature before and you find it in a whale which came from the Arctic or

Antarctic, it tells you that was made by people and it got into the whale, " he

said.

How that happened is unclear, but the contaminants likely were carried by

wind or ocean currents, or were eaten by the sperm whales' prey.

Sperm whales are toothed whales that eat all kinds of fish, even sharks.

Dozens have been taken by whaling ships in the past decade. Most of the

whales hunted by the whaling countries of Japan, Norway and Iceland are minke

whales, which are baleen whales that feed largely on tiny krill.

Chromium, an industrial pollutant that causes cancer in humans, was found

in all but two of the 361 sperm whale samples that were tested for it.

Those findings were published last year in the scientific journal Chemosphere.

" The biggest surprise was chromium, " Payne said. " That's an absolute

shocker. Nobody was even looking for it. "

The corrosion-resistant metal is used in stainless steel, paints, dyes and

the tanning of leather. It can cause lung cancer in people who work in

industries where it is commonly used, and was the focus of the California

environmental lawsuit that gained fame in the movie " Brockovich. "

It was impossible to say from the samples whether any of the whales

suffered diseases, but Wise found that the concentration of chromium found in

whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells

in a Petri dish, Payne said.

He said another surprise was the high concentrations of aluminum, which is

used in packaging, cooking pots and water treatment. Its effects are

unknown.

The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man,

he said.

" I don't see any future for whale species except extinction, " Payne said.

" This is not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I

think it should be. "