Climate change poses health threats in Arctic.

sea ice open new corridors into previously remote communities in the Arctic, residents can expect a wave of social ills and the introduction of diseases that may be as devastating as the Spanish flu was to those living in the North in the early 1990s, experts say. “A second wave of tumultuous change” is threatening Inuit health, says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Inuit activist, former international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work in linking climate change to human rights. “The overall invasion of new species, of new tourists, of workers who are on these ships are concerns for everybody living up there in terms of safety, security and health,” adds Watt-Cloutier, currently a visiting scholar at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, and one of the architects of the 2001 United Nations Stockholm Convention that prohibited the use of a class of toxic chemicals called persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the Arctic because they accumulate in the food chain and pose a health risk to Inuit peoples, many of whom still rely on hunting, trapping and fishing. “With climate change, as warming of the Arctic (carbon) sink increases, there is the distinct possibility that more POPs that are dormant at the bottom of the Arctic sink will be re-released back into the environment,” she says. Watt-Cloutier and others are also concerned about the threat of insect-borne and other zoonotic infectious diseases. “Within Canada, we’re seeing the emergence of certain zoonotic diseases,” such as West Nile virus and Lyme disease,” says Dr. Manisha Kulkarni, an epidemiologist with the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Centre for Foodborne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. In the North, “the risk of infection is greater in the human population due to the increased contact with wildlife that they have through their cultural practices,” such as hunting, fishing and skinning. There are both biomedical and psychological consequences from widescale environmental and cultural changes, James Ford, assistant professor of geography and head of the Climate Change Adaptation Research Group, at McGill University in Montréal, Quebec, writes in an email. “We are seeing enhanced dangers associated with sea ice and constrained access to traditional foods at key times of the year. Both are linked to mental health, as the act of hunting and consuming traditional foods is culturally very important, and nutritional well-being as the health benefits of consuming traditional foods is widely known.” The health impact from a major change in diet can be enormous, says Elisapee Sheutiapik, president of the nonprofit organization, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. “In some commuNews CMAJ