Global Warming: Cancer

Now scientists claim climate change could give you cancer (in the week Doomsday warning of rising sea levels was rubbished)




By David Derbyshire
Daily Mail
8th December 2010

Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, scientists say.

The long-lasting chemicals get into the food chain and build up in people's bodies - triggering tumours, heart disease and infertility.

The warning comes in a new international study into the links between climate change and a class of man-made toxins called persistent organic pollutants.

Warning: Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, claim scientists

It also arrives two days after alarming predictions that global warming could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century were proved to be wrong.

The new study – due to be published next month – says rising temperatures and more extreme weather are increasing human exposure to pollutants around the world, including in Britain.

Scientists are concerned about Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs, because they last decades in the environment and accumulate in body tissue.

They include pesticides such as DDT and chemicals called PCBs used in electrical goods.

Donald Cooper, of the United Nations Environment Programme which published the report at the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, said melting glaciers and ice sheets were releasing POPs trapped years ago into the air and seas.

Extreme weather events – such as this year’s devastating Pakistan floods - were releasing banned pollutants which been stockpiled ready to be destroyed.

And higher temperatures were likely to increase the spread of malaria – and increase the use of sprays such as DDT which are harmful to people.

'It is a problem in all parts of the world – pollutants do not respect borders. They travel thousands of miles and they continue to build'Mr Cooper said: 'Very small quantities of persistent organic pollutants get into the food chain but they accumulate in higher and higher levels as they go up the food chain. And the end of the food chain is us. We find them in mother’s breast milk and in blood.'

He added: ‘It is a problem in all parts of the world – they do not respect borders. They travel thousands of miles and they continue to build.

'In the past pollutants have travelled long distances and become trapped in ice in glaciers and ice sheets. But as the ice melts, or when temperatures go up, they are released back into the seas and atmosphere.

'It doesn’t matter whether you live in Kenya or Britain, the food goes everywhere around the world.'

The UN study found that levels of POPs measured in breast milk and blood were rising in parts of the world.

PCBs were banned after studies showed they mimicked sex hormones and were linked to cancer and infertility. They were once used in electrical goods.

The study also raises concerns about the increased exposure to DDT – an insecticide banned for use in farming, but still allowed to control disease spread by insects.

The authors are also concerned at PAHs, airborne pollutants produced by burning fuels.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of UNEP said freak weather events were releasing stockpiles of dangerous pesticides and other pollutants.

'The increasing frequency and severity of tropical cyclones and flood events are increasingly putting at risk stockpiles containing thousands of metric tonnes of obsolete POPs pesticides,' he said.

Higher temperatures can also make seals, whales and polar bars more vulnerable to pollutants, the report says.

The full report is due out next month.

In 2007, a forecast made by the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed a rise in sea levels above six feet was possible by the end of the century.

A Met Office study, the results of which were released this week, said this now looks unlikely.

A two to three feet rise will still submerge cities around the world.














GLOBAL WARMING