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STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHANIE PFIRMAN, ENVIRONMENTAL 



DEFENSE FUND 



Dr. Pfirman. Thank you. The Environmental Defense Fund has 

 recently launched a major initiative to address Arctic environ- 

 mental issues, including an assessment of the multimedia threats 

 to the Arctic environment and an evaluation of the effectiveness of 

 the existing legal regime to provide sufficient protection for the 

 Arctic. The Arctic environment is presently faced with significant 

 threats fi'om a wide variety of anthropogenic sources of contamina- 

 tion. In addition to the nuclear reactors and wastes dumped in 

 shallow waters near Novaya Zemlya, that we've been focusing on 

 mostly today, there are also significant threats to the Arctic 

 through oil spills, acid rain, heavy metals, PCB's, dioxin, DDT, and 

 superimposed on all of these threats are the additional concerns of 

 global warming, ozone depletion and Arctic haze. These environ- 

 mental threats are putting the Arctic and its people at risk. The 

 effects of these stresses range fi-om immediate harm to humans, as 

 we've heard, from Russian health statistics in the previous panel, 

 as well as to Arctic flora and fauna, to potential long-term damage 

 to entire ecosystems, and potential disruption of the entire global 

 climate system. 



What I'd like to do now is show some overheads that detail some 

 of the possible sources of pollution in the Arctic and some of the 

 transport pathways that you've been hearing about on previous 

 panels. This map here was put together by the Norwegian Polar 

 Research Institute together with the Academy of Sciences of the 

 USSR, £ind also the Polish Academy of Sciences. What it shows are 

 some of the biological resources of the Barents Sea. Norway is 

 down here. Spitsbergen is here. And Novaya Zemlya, the area 

 we've been talking about, is over here. In addition to the areas of 

 concern that the map originally identified, I also included the sites 

 of reactor dumping and the areas where low level nuclear wastes 

 may have been disposed of. This data is from Greenpeace.' High- 

 lighted in red are some of the areas that we're especially concerned 

 about. In this box down here and along these areas we have reports 

 of unspecified dumping. The dump sites may contain some radio- 

 active waste. The mushroom-shaped sites here are where explosive 

 nuclear tests occurred. 



Now we've been talking a lot about what data exists, and what 

 we still need to find out. What I'd like to show here is that there 

 is actually an extensive data base already available. It's located 

 within the former Soviet Union and we just have to do some work 

 in ferreting it out. 



In 1973 a Russian scientist, Tansiura, published this map show- 

 ing bottom current transport in the Barents Sea, exactly in the 

 area where these dumping activities have occurred. Taking this 

 data together with similar data from other sources, we can put to- 

 gether a projection of where radioactive contaminants, as well as 

 other pollutants could be transported in the Barents Sea and po- 

 tentially enter the Arctic Ocean. We, of course, cannot rely on these 

 maps that just show circles and arrows. We must get back to the 

 original data. And for this reason, it's very important that we make 

 contact with the scientists who have put together these maps, find 



