Polar bears, Arctic foxes and Inuit peoples are under threat from man-made toxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that build up in the food chain, new research reveals.
Environmental and animal groups want a global ban on the production of the chemicals to safeguard the health of the animals.
Some scientists believethe PCBs are leading to "gender-bender" polar bears in Norway and Greenland, after the discovery of a number of female bears which had both male and female sexual organs.
The report, produced by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme based in Norway, said the toxins followed air and water currents from as far as Asia to the remote and fragile Arctic environments.
PCBs are chemical compounds that were once widely used in plastics and electrical insulation and can be produced by incomplete combustion of plastics. It can take decades for them to break down and their use is now largely banned in the West.
The toxins build up in the food chain, especially in fatty tissue such as blubber in whales and seals. Blubber is a key part of the diet for polar bears and indigenous people of the Arctic.
In a separate study, female polar bears with both male and female sexual organs were discovered in 1997 on Norway's Svalbard archipelago.
Similar hermaphrodite bears have also been found on Greenland, the cause put down to the effects of accumulated PCBs. Though they are not believed to have the same effect in humans, they are thought to be carcinogenic.
