Environmental Assessment and Clean-Up

Chukotka Autonomous Region, Russia

In the Arctic metal drums have been used for decades to deliver a variety of products to remote villages including kerosene, gasoline, fuel oil, motor oil, grease, lubricants solvents and paints. Backhauling of drums was uncommon and the vast majority was either reused or discarded. Consequently, abandoned drums have become a common feature of the Arctic landscape, sometimes littering shoreline, forest and tundra for miles around villages.

Release of contaminants into the Arctic environment is not a new problem. Today however, climate change is accelerating the problem by causing the ground to thaw and mobilizing contaminants that had been frozen for decades. Climate change is also increasing seasonal runoff, transporting contaminants into the Bering or Chukchi Sea and ultimately into the diet of Alaska Natives.

In the summer of 2008, the Center for Climate and Health worked with EPA, Unga Tribal Council, the Chukotka Red Cross and the Northwest Public Health Research Center (St. Petersburg) to perform an environmental assessment of drum sites in the village of Lorino, and to assist in the clean-up of abandoned drums. Over the course of one month, hundreds of abandoned drums were removed over a 40 km road corridor and around surrounding beaches. More clean-up activity will be necessary to prevent an estimate 33,000 to 55,000 gallons of drum stored liquid waster from traveling from this community to the Chukchi Sea. CCH recommends expanded cooperative efforts with Russian, Canadian and other Arctic partners. Lorino is a demonstration of how through local action we can address a circumpolar health problem.

In Lorino, a traditional Chukchi and Eskimo whaling village in the Chukotka Autonomous Region, metal drums could be seen for miles in every direction. In the village, thousands of drums are still in use, storing hazardous materials or wastes. As the drums rust and fail the contents are released into the soil surface water, and groundwater. Discarded drums are reused by residents to store everything from waste products to processed whale oil, water, home alcohol and traditional foods.

Use of drums for storage of products for human consumption poses a known health risk for the people of Lorino. Release of contaminants into the environment poses a risk regionally and even globally. The effects of these drum sites in villages, industrial facilities and military installations is shared by Arctic residents in Alaska and Canada who live downstream; and by consumers of commercially harvested foods from Arctic waters. Ultimately 85% of the Chukchi sea water will flow north through the Bering Strait and east towards Alaska and Canada. Persistent chemicals such as PCBs accumulate in traditional foods and ultimately reach the end of a fork in Russia, Alaska, Canada or beyond.

Today we know that:

• Abandoned drums present a vast reservoir of contaminants, upstream from Alaska;
• Thawing permafrost increasingly mobilizes contaminants, previously in a frozen state.
• Contaminants concentrate in the marine food chain;
• Wild foods are ingested by consumers in the Arctic and beyond;
• Contaminants are resulting in negative health effects in some Arctic populations.

The following documents provide more information on the drum clean-up in Lorino and future recomendations:

• Cleaning-Up the Russian Arctic
• Chukotka 2008 Trip Report

For more information please contact us at (907)-729-2464 or (907)-729-4493

Or by e-mail at akaclimate@anthc.org