OSU-authored study finds high toxicity in national parks

A 6-year study commissioned by the US Park Service and co-authored by a professor at Oregon State University has found that 70 contaminants, including pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants have been found in extremely high levels in some of America's largest national parks.

From the Associated Press...

"Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study.

The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success.

Contaminants that accumulated in fish exceeded human consumption thresholds at the eight parks that researchers focussed on most: Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Gates of the Arctic and Denali national parks and Alaska's Noatak National Preserve.

Also, mercury levels at the eight parks and DDT levels at Glacier and Sequoia and Kings Canyon exceeded health thresholds for fish-eating wildlife. Kent said he found airborne contaminants are causing male fish to develop female organs in some parks.

Much of the contamination is thought to have come from overseas - traveling global air currents from Europe and Asia.

But researchers said they were surprised to find substantial contamination from the local use of legal pesticides, particularly in agricultural areas around Glacier, Rocky Mountain and Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks.

The study is the most comprehensive ever conducted to examine the effects of pollution outside of major population centers.