The Arctic Messenger - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 15

Our story begins with the Cold War, when the nuclear powers tested many of their weapons
by exploding them in the atmosphere. Some of the unstable radioactive nuclear products
(radionuclides) resulting from the tests remained close to the test site, but a large portion
was injected into the stratosphere, where they would take about a year to reach the tropo-
sphere below. From here, the radionuclides fell to Earth as dry or wet deposition (rain or
snow). Monitoring results of Sami people in northern Europe were published in 1961 and
revealed far-higher bodyburdensofradionuclides than seen inother European populations.
Further circumpolar studies quickly clarified that similar body burdens existed in other cir-
cumpolar people whose diet heavily depended on local terrestrial foods. The source was
attributed to the nuclear bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and,
more substantially, to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. These results played a major
role indecisions being taken that ultimately resulted inthe complete abandonment ofatmo-
spheric weapons testing in 1980. The peak of radioactive fallout in the Arctic from global
weapons testing occurred between the late 1950s and 1963. Since that time, levels have
significantly decreased - except for a short burst caused by the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
It is not surprising that after 1961, Arctic peoples who harvested caribou and reindeer
found themselves facing difficult dietary decisions - decisions related not just to their diet
but also to the basis of their culture. They knew that they as a people had played no role
in causing the root cause of their predicament. But the potential effects of the root cause to
their health and particularly to their children were frightening and invisible.
Acid rain presented a variation on the same theme. Awareness of how sulphur dioxide
and nitrogen oxides emitted from combustion sources can react with water in the atmo-
sphere, resulting in acid rain far from such sources, began to be well understood in the
1960sandearly1970s.Inthiscase,manyofthecombustionsourceareaswerevisible,such
as the industrial heartlands of north-eastern North America and of the United Kingdom and
Eurasia. Likewise, the effects on forest growth and freshwater ecosystems in areas of in-
tense acid rain could also be recognized and monitored. These areas were mainly south of
theArctic, butthere wereseveral veryimportant exceptions. MuchofNorway,Swedenand
Finland, including their Arctic regions, lies in the midst of the atmospheric stream moving