Article

Increasing Perfluoroalkyl Contaminants in East Greenland Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus): A New Toxic Threat to the Arctic Bears

Department of Arctic Environment and Department of Atmospheric Environment, National Environmental Research Institute (NERI), University of Aarhus, Frederiksborgvej 399, P. O. Box 358, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, P. O. Box 570, DK-3900 Nuuk, Greenland
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (7), pp 2701–2707
DOI: 10.1021/es7025938
Publication Date (Web): February 29, 2008
Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society
* Corresponding author phone: +45 46301938 ; fax: +45 46301914; e-mail: rdi@dmu.dk., †

Department of Arctic Environment, NERI, University of Aarhus.

, ‡

Department of Atmospheric Environment, NERI, University of Aarhus.

, §

Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

Synopsis

PFC data from East Greenland polar bears from 1984 to 2006 show increasing trends with significantly yearly increases from 2.3 to 27.4% dependent on statistical method applied.

Abstract

A well-defined subsample of 128 subadult (3–5 years) polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from 19 sampling years within the period 1984–2006 was investigated for perfluoroalkyl contaminants (PFCs). Linear regression analysis of logarithmic-transformed median concentrations showed significant annual increases for PFOS (4.7%), PFNA (6.1%), PFUnA (5.9%), PFDA (4.3%), PFTrA (8.5%), PFOA (2.3%), and PFDoA (5.2%). For four of the PFCs, a LOESS smoother model provided significantly better descriptions, revealing steeper linear annual increases for PFOSA of 9.2% after 1990 and between 18.6 and 27.4% for PFOS, PFDA, and PFTrA after 2000. Concentrations of ΣPFCs, by 2006, exceeded the concentrations of all conventional OHCs (organohalogen compounds), of which several have been documented to correlate with a number of negative health effects. If the PFC concentrations in polar bears continue to increase with the steepest observed trends, then the lowest no-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) and lowest-adverse-effect level (LOAEL) detected for rats and monkeys will be exceeded in 2014–2024. In addition, the rapidly increasing concentrations of PFCs are likely to cause cumulative and combined effects on the polar bear, compounding the already detected threats from OHCs.

Supporting Information


Table providing annual mean of age, median and range of the analyzed PFCs, and the number of polar bear liver analyses conducted in the present study. This information is available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.

Citation data is made available by participants in CrossRef's Cited-by Linking service. For a more comprehensive list of citations to this article, users are encouraged to perform a search in SciFinder.

Metrics

Article Views: 1,036 Times
Received 2 November 2007
Date accepted 17 January 2008
Published online 29 February 2008
Published in print 1 April 2008
Learn more about these metrics Article Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.

The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated.
+
More Article Metrics
Explore by:

ACS News