ABSTRACT
The residents of Quaanaag, Greenland, are among the most chemically contaminated people on Earth. Their blood contains mercury at levels as much as 12 times the recommended U.S. guidelines for this toxic metal. That might seem unremarkable, until you look at a map. Quaanaag is a settlement of 650 inhabitants far above the Arctic Circle, accessible only by a 45-minute helicopter ride from Thule Air Base. It has little traditional industry or employment, its residents see no sunlight for four months out of the year, and the sea is covered with ice from October through mid-July. Residents of Quaanaag do not create mercury pollution; rather, it is a “gift” from the industrialized world to them. They are exposed to mercury in the whale, seal, and fish that they eat, even though they are living the same subsistence lifestyle their ances-
tors have lived for centuries.1 “There may be only 155,000 Inuit in the
entire world,” says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (an organization that represents Inuit of Greenland, Alaska, Canada, and the Chukotka area in Russia), “but the Arctic is the barometer of the health of the planet, and if the Arctic is poisoned, so are we all.” Watt-Cloutier is exactly right, and Quaanaag is proof that mercury contamination is a problem with global reach.2
