Dr. Jeffrey Chiarenzelli was once employed as a researcher at the SUNY Oswego Environmental Research Center. His research team learned that PCBs evaporate from contaminated soils and sediments. This explains how PCBs and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) become part of the global environment. Semi volatile POPs evaporate from soils and enter the outdoor atmosphere. POPs present in sediments dissolve in water and then evaporate from the surface of the water to enter the outdoor atmosphere. Atmospheric POPs eventually deposit out of the air to contaminate the soil or a body of water.
Respiratory exposure to POPs occurs in the vicinity of POPs contaminated sites. This exposure is in addition to the POPs exposures received as a result of consumption of animal fats.
It has been reported in the scientific literature that residing in the vicinity of POPs contaminated sites increases risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Environmental health scientist David O. Carpenter, MD believes that this increased risk results from respiratory exposure.
Residents of those regions down wind from the Great Lakes continuously breathe small quantities of POPs. Those who reside in the vicinity of POPs contaminated sites in regions down wind from the Great Lakes such as the St. Lawrence River Valley receive additional respiratory exposure. The residents of Akwesasne, a Mohawk reserve located on the St. Lawrence River East of Massena, New York have breathed POPs coming in the wind from the Great Lakes and PCBs evaporating from the contaminated sites at the ALCOA West facility, the former Reynolds Metals facility and the former GM Powertrain facility. These people have received excessively high respiratory POPs exposures.
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