Alaska Beacon

Alaska State Troopers arrested Lindsay Kavanaugh, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, for allegedly driving while intoxicated over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Officials with the party confirmed the arrest on Tuesday.

“I am disappointed that my friend and colleague may have exercised poor judgment while on personal leave and jeopardized the safety of herself and others,” said party chair Mike Wenstrup. “As executive director, Lindsay’s performance to date has been exemplary. I remain confident in her ability to perform her responsibilities as she continues to move the Alaska Democratic Party forward.”

According to Troopers’ account, an officer stopped Kavanaugh’s car about 1:20 a.m. Saturday for moving violations on the Sterling Highway south of Soldotna.

The officer believed Kavanaugh was driving under the influence, but Kavanaugh refused to submit to a breath test, the dispatch states. After being arrested and taken to the trooper post, troopers say she unplugged some equipment.

Kavanaugh, who became the Democratic Party’s director in 2019, has been charged with three misdemeanors, including DUI, criminal mischief and refusing to submit to a chemical test.

Online court records list the charges, but an arraignment has not yet been scheduled. Kavanaugh did not return a phone call seeking comment, and no attorney is listed online.

Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist plays a song from her phone at a gravesite near Lawson Creek on Douglas Island in Juneau. She rests the phone down on the ground.

“It was a T’aaḵu Kwáan song, the wolf song. I suspect that he’s of the T’aaḵu Kwáan, and so I’ve played the song to honor him and his people, and let him hear it through the ground,” Hasselquist said.

The stone grave marker has a Bible at the very top with the gates of heaven underneath, and a wolf under that. It has two names on it — Kitchoshan and Kakantan. The person was born July 5, 1850, and died June 3, 1901.

This is just one of the hundreds of mostly neglected resting places found off Douglas Highway, around the Lawson Creek area, many of which belong to Native people. Hasselquist is part of a group of volunteers who spends time restoring and uncovering Native gravesites, “not letting them be forgotten and keeping them from being built over,” she said. “We know that that kind of thing happened here.”

A little further south along Douglas Highway is Sayéik Gastineau elementary school, which was built upon a Native burial ground in the late 1950s.

Since last April, Hasselquist said volunteers have spent hundreds of hours on weekends and in the evenings “chopping their way through” all the growth and foliage — cutting down salmonberry bushes, weed whacking and cutting off tree limbs and old dead trees.

Juneau resident Hanna Schempf is another volunteer.

“You’d whack off enough bushes that you could clear the gravesite you were looking at. And then you’d look through the stems, and you can see other graves just keep going and going and going,” she said.

A 1995 City and Borough of Juneau report on historic cemeteries in Douglas says about 514 graves are within cemeteries that are recognized as “the Catholic, Eagles, Douglas Indian, Masons, Odd Fellows, City, Servian, Asian, Native, and Russian Orthodox.” Today, a few of these sections, like the Eagles and Catholic, are kept up well, but some of the others are not.

The volunteer group has restored or uncovered dozens of Native gravesites, Hasselquist said, including Chief Johnson, chief of the T’aaḵu Kwáan.

“His stone was completely over. We didn’t even know who it was. It was just toppled over,” she said.

Volunteers have found many indentations in the ground though not the markers for each. Some were buried inches underground and uncovered during cleanup. “So we suspect that there are other markers there; we just have to go and find them,” Hasselquist said.

“Everybody deserves a place of rest with honor, dignity and respect,” Hasselquist said. “We all have an inherent right and a responsibility to care for these areas whether we’re related to them or not. This is part of our community.”

‘Neglected, forgotten and destroyed’

Hasselquist was inspired to do this work from Sitka resident and cemetery restoration expert Bob Sam. She first saw his work with Sitka cemeteries on Facebook and later saw it in person. Last April, the two connected when Sam was in Juneau to work on the Lawson Creek cemetery.

For Sam, restoring and maintaining cemeteries — whether in Sitka, Juneau, or Japan — is his life work. “This is something I’ve been doing since I was a small child,” he said. The work is “not a one-time thing. It’s perpetual care.”

Sam, 68, has family buried in Juneau. He first started cemetery restoration in Juneau in the early 1990s at Evergreen Cemetery, specifically the Orthodox Church section. Then he started working at Lawson Creek after learning more about it from Lingít elder Marie Olson.

“The Native section of Lawson Creek was neglected, forgotten and destroyed. Every headstone was knocked down. There was little evidence that they existed,” Sam said. “It took years to cut brush, remove trash, upright headstones just to find the Native section of Lawson Creek. I could not have done this work without support from Elders who also donated tools and stuff.”

Sam said it’s a responsibility to take care and maintain the gravesites of ancestors.

“We’re all human beings and how we treat the dead defines our humanity,” he said. “If a cemetery looks neglected and forgotten, it gets abused. But if you clean it up, make it look real nice, it gets to a point where it takes care of itself, where people pick up after themselves and show respect.”

A healing process

Though the intent was to unearth and restore Native gravesites, Hasselquist and other volunteers have spent a lot of time on other neglected and forgotten resting places as well.

“We extended after we got the salmonberry bushes down from our ancestral area,” Hasselquist said.

But first, the group had to go through a healing process.

“A lot of things were said out loud, verbalized, just bringing out the frustrations about how we were not tended to and that we just will not be invisible anymore, we will be seen, they will be seen and remembered,” Hasselquist said.

“And so when we got through all of that, there was a weight lifted, and we were looking at the other areas, and we’re like, ‘Let’s go do it. Let’s start working on them.’”

Hasselquist would like to focus and work specifically on the Native section.

“But we’ve been so focused on other areas that it’s consumed our time. So if we could get others to take responsibility for the other areas, at least tending to them by mowing and weed whacking and keeping control of the salmonberry bushes and things like that because it’s just a jungle on that side.”

Schempf, one of the volunteers, is slowly working on a database of the cemetery that will eventually be public.

“All the information I’ve gathered is publicly available; much of it is accessible for free online. It is, however, very scattered. I’m hoping to pull it all together in a way that makes it easy for families to find their loved ones and find information about them more easily.”

“Many of the people buried in Douglas fought for recognition and respect in life, and fought to be remembered in death. It takes ongoing effort to support that, and a lot of the history of these cemeteries is already irrecoverably lost — loss of physical records, loss of living memories, and neglect of the cemeteries themselves have all played a part. It’s important to work on them now before more is lost,” Schempf said.

Whose responsibility is it?

The issue of maintaining the historic cemeteries in Douglas was most recently brought to the City and Borough of Juneau’s attention in 2018 when former mayor Merrill Sanford offered to transfer the well-maintained Eagles’ cemetery to the city at no cost with the understanding that the city would continue maintenance. The city explored what that process would entail but ultimately no action was taken. Sanford also asked the city to consider acquiring the other cemeteries in Douglas.

The cemeteries and gravesites near Lawson Creek in Douglas are owned by various parties and precise land ownership is not something the City and Borough of Juneau has ever been able to pin down.

A 2019 memo to the Lands Committee said, “There has been controversy concerning ownership of the cemeteries in Douglas since the late 1800s. Discussions about the upkeep of the cemeteries and whether or not they were city property began as early as the 1940s and the topic has been brought to the municipal governing body (Douglas City and the City & Borough of Juneau respectively) every decade since.”

According to the city, “there hasn’t been much movement” on the issue of maintaining Douglas cemeteries since the 2019 memo.

“I think this could be picked up again if the Assembly makes it a priority, which could be the outcome of citizens bringing it up,” lands and resources manager Dan Bleidorn said.

The city’s parks and recreation department currently maintains the Douglas Indian Cemetery, which is across the street from Sayéik Gastineau elementary school and set apart from the other cemeteries surrounding Lawson Creek. While the city doesn’t own it, the city’s been providing weekly maintenance of it since 2012 when a renovation at the school disturbed human remains.

Finding peace

Hasselquist said, for her, choosing to restore Native gravesites “has to do with my own personal life trauma.” The trauma stems from her ancestors and family attending residential boarding school institutions and “the things that were brought home and taken from us.” She’s the first generation of her family who didn’t attend a residential boarding school.

When the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children were found on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia last summer, Hasselquist said working on restoring gravesites “helped with the anxiety and the triggering that was happening.”

“It helps me find more peace,” she said. “And then it feels good to tend to our ancestors and take care of those places. They deserve to be resting somewhere that’s beautiful, and in honor and dignity and respect.”

The volunteers’ work has inspired others to join in through cemetery restoration and clean-up events posted on the group’s Facebook page. Hasselquist hopes to “ignite a spark” in younger people to take care of the areas.

Alaskans’ health starts suffering when temperatures climb to 70 degrees, and local and state officials should consider policies to respond to heat-related health problems that are expected to increase as the climate continues to warm, according to new research.

The results come from research led by Micah Hahn, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, that examined hospital visits in Anchorage, Fairbanks and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and measured them against weather conditions from 2015 to the record-hot Alaska summer of 2019.

Hahn and her research partners found a direct tie between the heat index, a commonly used measure of heat and humidity, to heat illnesses, respiratory problems like asthma and cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks — starting at what might seem in the Lower 48 to be a mild temperature.

“At 70 degrees, we’re seeing health effects,” said Hahn, an assistant professor at UAA’s Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies.

Some of those effects took a few days to show up. Asthma, for example, generally set in the day after a temperature spike, she said. Other problems emerged as much as five days later, the team found.

Prolonged summer heat compounded the health risks, they found. For each day with a heat index above 72 degrees, the results showed that the odds for emergency department visits in subsequent days for heat-related illnesses increased by 9%, odds for visits for ischemia, the restriction of blood flow that causes a drop in oxygen supply to parts of the body, increased by 8%, and odds for visits for myocardial infarction, the technical term for heart attacks, increased by 12%. There were different risks for various demographic groups, with Alaska Natives more likely to be treated for ischemia, for example, and people over 65 more prone to heart attacks, the research found.

The study, which is to be published soon, can be used to help the National Weather Service and state and local health officials come up with a threshold for a tool that has not been used in Alaska in the past but might become important in the future, Hahn said: heat alerts.

“The whole point of this study was to try to figure out what’s the threshold where we should issue heat alerts,” she said.

In more southern latitudes of the country, the National Weather Service routinely issues heat alerts for high temperatures, such as 100 degrees or more. Clearly, that threshold would have to be lower in Alaska.

Part of the reason is acclimatization. Alaskans are simply not used to high temperatures, just as people in more southern latitudes are not used to cold temperatures.

That is a common phenomenon, said Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the National Weather Service. “No matter where you are, if it’s 10 degrees warmer than it should be for that day, it feels really warm,” he said.

But there is more that makes Alaska’s summer heat more intense.

The angle of the sun at Alaska’s high latitude — lower in the sky and present nearly around the clock — is a big factor, Brettschneider said.

“The sun angle’s lower, so the sun is physically shining on more of your body,” he said. That is different from a place like Texas or Oklahoma, where the sun is straight overhead, shines down and can be blocked by a hat.

Even his parents visiting from Texas have noticed that 70 or 72 degrees in Alaska seems extremely warm, he said. “It just feels a lot warmer than what the temperature reads,” he said.

At lower latitudes, the sun also disappears at night, allowing for cool evenings, Hahn added. “In Alaska, we really don’t get that respite,” she said.

There may be not much respite indoors, either.

“Homes in Alaska don’t have central air conditioning,” Brettschneider said. “All our homes are built to store every molecule of heat. They’re not made to promote airflow and stay cool.”

The angle of the sun in summer also affects indoor spaces, too, with light from the low-hanging sun streaming directly through windows for long periods, heating up floors and carpets, he said.

On top of that, there are lifestyle factors that increase Alaskans’ risks from heat, said Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer and an emergency room doctor.

She has noticed in her practice that hot days come with an increase in cases of shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, overheating in cars and similar problems, she said after listening to a presentation by Hahn in April at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage. The elderly are most affected because they have more difficulty regulating their body temperatures, she said.

Hot or not, Alaskans are used to being physically active in the summer, Zink said. “We’re all manic all summer, right?” she said. And that can bring unexpected problems, as she saw in past summers, she said. “People would go up and hike the Butte or some trail that they were used to and then they would pass out. And then the family would bring them in,” she said, mentioning a popular hiking spot in Palmer.

Heat is often compounded with wildfire smoke, a known health hazard that this summer has plagued Fairbanks and some other regions – and that is increasing in frequency as the climate warms.

That leads to a double problem.

“When we have really hot, smoky days, you can’t go outside, you can’t go inside. Where’s the really safe place to be?” Hahn said.

One partial answer might be in shelters offering cool and clean. Fairbanks Memorial Hospital has in the past set aside one of its rooms as a clean-air shelter, and the clinic at Fort Yukon was equipped several years ago with a cooling system that established a similar shelter there, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. The government in Canada’s Yukon Territory has published instructions for residents who want to create their own clean-air shelters.

Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, just finished a June that will be the second hottest on record – after the sweltering June of 2019 – and was also at times plagued by wildfire smoke.

Dry conditions conducive to wildfires have persisted for much of the state, with droughts in and around Anchorage, and in much of Interior and southwestern Alaska at the end of June, according to the national drought monitor.

As of June 30, wildfires around Alaska had burned over 1.6 million acres, just edging out the 2015 totals up to the period. The 2015 fire season wound up being the second biggest on record, with 5.1 million acres burned by summer’s end. In addition to the respiratory and cardiovascular risks posed by wildfire smoke, there are mental health effects, Hahn said.

She detailed those effects in a separate study that interviewed residents affected by the long-lasting and severe Swan Lake Fire of 2019, which burned for months and scorched nearly 170,000 acres on the Kenai Peninsula.

Mental-health problems ranged from short-term anxiety over the immediate emergency and feelings of claustrophobia because the roads were closed to stress over the economic hit from a lost tourist season to later grief, manifested after the fire finally ended in the fall, “when they went out to see what the aftermath looks like,” Hahn said. The effects were long-lasting. Even in 2021, “people mentioned that they were still being affected by the Swan Lake Fire,” she said.

Alaska was the only U.S. coastal region to have an increase in the confirmed cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear in 2020, a contrast to a national trend of declining cases over the past six to eight years, according to a report issued Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Of the 53 cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear nationally in 2020, 11 occurred in Alaska, according to the report, from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The previous year, there were 75 confirmed cases of whale entanglements nationwide, with nine of them occurring in Alaska, according to a separate report for 2019 also released Tuesday by the fisheries service.

The vast majority of confirmed Alaska whale entanglements — and the vast majority of entanglements nationally — involved humpback whales. In 2020, 10 of the Alaska cases involved live whales, and eight of those involved humpback whales. All but one of the confirmed Alaska entanglements of live large whales in 2020 occurred in waters of Southeast Alaska, according to the report.

Humpback whales are relatively plentiful among the large whale species, the report for 2020 notes. “Humpback whales are found in all the world’s oceans and several populations have rebounded in recent years, so the frequency of entanglements seen in this species could be due to many factors, such as the increasing number of whales, a high degree of overlap in distribution of whales, growing coastal communities, and fishing effort, or a combination of these or additional factors,” it said.

The Central North Pacific stock of humpback whales, which accounts for most of the humpback whales found in Alaska waters, now numbers over 21,000, rebounding from a low of 1,400 in 1966, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The 2020 entanglement statistics might be skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report cautioned. There were fewer fishing vessels operating that year, but there were also fewer people on the water to observe and report entanglements, the report said.

]In general, the reported statistics are likely an understatement of the risks that large whales face from encounters with fishing gear, which can kill the animals or cause serious injuries such as amputations, the report for 2020 said. “Importantly, confirmed entanglements underestimate the true number of entangled whales, as many entangled whales go undetected,” it said.

One environmental group said the report showed the need for better protections.

“These reports show far too many endangered whales are caught in fishing gear, particularly because reported entanglements are just the tip of the iceberg,” Kristen Monsell of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “We need a swift transition to ropeless or pop-up fishing gear starting in our national marine sanctuaries, which fail woefully to protect these majestic animals. The Fisheries Service should push hard and help the fishing industry adopt whale-friendly gear.”

With the overturning of Roe, reproductive rights advocates in Alaska are encouraging voters to vote no on a constitutional convention during the general election this coming November, while abortion opponents are encouraging voters to vote yes.

The right to have an abortion in Alaska is protected through the state constitution’s provision on privacy, as recognized by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1997. This November, voters will be asked whether or not to call a constitutional convention, which would pave the way for changing the constitution and potentially taking that protection for abortion away.

During a Rally for Reproductive Justice in Juneau on Saturday, voting no on the constitutional convention question was a front and center issue.

“Every 10 years, our great Constitution requires a vote out of all of us on whether we want a constitutional convention,” former Democratic state Rep. Beth Kerttula said to a crowd of several hundred people outside the Dimond Courthouse.

Kerttula called the ballot question “a sneaky thing” because “it sounds kind of good, like, ‘Well, yeah, let’s get a good look at this and see what we need to do and are there things we need to change?’” But, she said Alaska has “a great constitution.”

Kerttula said, “if you care about equal rights to education, to health care, and if you care about the right to choice, vote no.”

The crowd followed her remarks with a “vote no” chant.

During his speech at the rally, State Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, encouraged the crowd to vote no on a constitutional convention, saying Alaska has an “explicit right to privacy in our constitution” as well as “judges who are chosen on merit, not on politics.”

“Here in Alaska, those judges have read the rules, they’ve read the constitution, they’ve looked at the world and they’ve said, ‘No, your right to privacy includes a decision when or whether you’re going to become a parent, and the decision to choose a perfectly safe and effective medical procedure, if that’s what’s right for you,’” he said. “Folks, as long as we can keep their mitts off the Alaska Constitution, it’s going to stay that way in our state.”

Nancy Courtney is a board member of Juneau Pro-Choice Coalition, which organized the June 25 rally. She said voting no on the constitutional convention in the November general election is included in its fundraising letter to supporters.

“That’s one of the biggest fears that we have is that it’s going to open up Pandora’s box if we have a constitutional convention,” Courtney said.

Potential changes to constitution

In 2021, Palmer Sen. Shelley Hughes sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 4, which proposed an amendment to the Alaska Constitution relating to abortion.

The resolution would’ve amended Article 1 of the constitution to add a new section that says, “To protect human life, nothing in this constitution may be construed to secure or protect a right to an abortion or require the State to fund an abortion.”

It passed out of the Health and Social Services Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee and didn’t go any further. It never made it to the Senate or House floors to get the two-thirds vote of each body it would’ve needed to get on a ballot. But this is language that Jim Minnery wants to see taken up during a constitutional convention.

Minnery is a president of Alaska Family Action, a nonprofit Christian public policy organization. He said Hughes’ resolution is “simply clarifying the neutrality of the state constitution.”

The Alaska Supreme Court in 1997 recognized that “reproductive rights are fundamental, and that they are encompassed within the right to privacy expressed in Article 1, Section 22 of the Alaska Constitution … These fundamental reproductive rights include the right to an abortion.”

Minnery said the court’s interpretation of the constitution was “made up out of whole cloth.”

“We believe firmly that the Supreme Court of Alaska interpreted the privacy clause in a manner that wasn’t at all meant by the founding fathers when they put the privacy clause in there, (which) has absolutely nothing to do with abortion.”

Minnery said, in November, he would be voting yes to the constitutional convention question and is encouraging Alaskans across the state to do the same. In addition to protecting “innocent, pre-born lives,” Minnery wants a constitutional convention because he supports reforming the judicial selection process to be more like the federal system.

“The governor should have the ability to be able to appoint people who are aligned with their belief system and how they believe jurisprudence should be carried out,” Minnery said.

Currently, when appointing justices to the Alaska Supreme Court, the governor must choose from a list of two or more nominees compiled by the Alaska Judicial Council. The Alaska Judicial Council is an independent state commission.

Ultimately, Minnery said the issue of abortion and safeguards around it should be decided by the people through their elected representatives who pass legislation.

Constitutional convention question

Every 10 years, the state constitution requires the lieutenant governor to place the question “Shall there be a Constitutional Convention?” on a general election ballot, if a convention hasn’t been held. Alaska hasn’t held a constitutional convention since 1955-1956, when the state constitution was developed.

Voters will be asked the question during the upcoming general election in November. A “yes” vote supports holding a state constitutional convention. A “no” vote opposes holding a convention.

If the majority of voters vote no, the question will be asked again in another 10 years. If the majority votes yes, what comes next is a multi-year process, Josh Applebee with the lieutenant governor’s office said.

“The process could take as long as four-plus years or, depending on the Legislature, it could be as short as, say, two years,” Applebee said.

The Legislature would be responsible for outlining the delegate selection process.

According to the constitution, “delegates to the convention shall be chosen at the next regular statewide election, unless the legislature provides for the election of the delegates at a special election.”

The next regular statewide election after this November isn’t until the primary election in August 2024.

Once delegates are selected, the convention would be held. After the convention takes place, amendments or revisions to the constitution must be ratified by voters in another election. The constitution doesn’t specify which election.

Chemicals from fire retardants and other materials have accumulated in the bodies of seals, whales and other animals of the northern Bering Sea, showing that pollutants emitted thousands of miles away continue to contaminate animals on which Indigenous people depend for food, according to a newly published study.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, focuses on marine mammals and reindeer harvested by the Yup’ik residents of St. Lawrence Island, at the southern end of the Bering Strait.

Through samples donated by hunters, researchers – who included island residents themselves – found varying levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and per- and polyfuoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in marine mammals and reindeer on or around the island.

PBDEs are a class of compounds used as flame retardants. PFAS compounds are also used for that purpose but are found in a wide variety of consumer products such as cosmetics, clothing and cookware; they are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment. PBDEs have been phased out in the United States since 2004, but there is no national PFAS ban.

The study of subsistence foods at St. Lawrence Island shows how contaminants carried to the far north by atmospheric and ocean currents persist for years and sometimes decades, burdening the region’s Indigenous people.

“We are being contaminated against our will,” said study co-author Vi Waghiyi, who is from Savoonga, one of the two villages on the island.

Still, the findings should not deter people from conducting their harvests of negepik, or traditional foods, said Waghiyi, the environmental health and justice program director at Alaska Community Action on Toxics, a nonprofit environmental health organization based in Anchorage.

“Our people still feel the benefits outweigh the risks. It is our identity,” she said. “We’re intricately tied to our lands and waters and wildlife that have sustained our people since time immemorial.”

The St. Lawrence Island findings are, in some ways, similar to those of other studies of contaminants in animals around the Arctic.

There were some new discoveries, however. The study appears to be the first to document PFAS compounds in bowhead whales, with traces showing up in mangtak – the name for skin-attached blubber – and blubber alone and muscle.

It also found that of all tested species, seals generally had the highest levels of PBDEs. That shows how persistent those chemicals are in the environment, said Pam Miller, ACAT’s executive director.

“Even though they’ve been subject to some global regulation and regulation in the U.S., they’re still very ubiquitous in the Arctic and still prevalent in people and wildlife that people depend on for traditional foods,” said Miller, another co-author.

The study, which used tissue samples provided by local hunters, is the latest in a series in a research program conducted by ACAT and its partners. The program traces back to the advocacy of Annie Alowa, a former health aide in Savoonga, who pushed for cleanup of military pollution on the island after watching so many villagers get cancer and other health problems. Much of the inspiration for ACAT’s founding and its continued work; she died of cancer herself in 1999.

The research program is notable for its community focus and reliance on local leadership and knowledge, said Waghiyi, who was named last year to a White House advisory council on environmental justice. “It’s one of the few where we’re not just research subjects,” she said.

While this newly published study focuses on pollutants that are carried long distances in the air and in the ocean, other work in the program is continuing to examine the effects of pollution from Northeast Cape, a military site closed in the 1970s, and other on-island sites.

St. Lawrence Island gets pollution from both faraway and local sources, and it is possible to distinguish between the two, said study lead author Sam Byrne, an assistant professor of biological and global health at Middlebury College.

Proximity to military sites and places like landfills is one distinguishing factor, he said. The types of chemicals discovered is another factor, as lighter compounds are more volatile and can be more easily carried by the winds, while heavier compounds such as some of the PCBs found near Northeast Cape, tend to not travel far.

The problems go beyond emissions of dangerous chemicals, Waghiyi and Miller said. Melt of sea ice and glacier ice, thaw of permafrost and the proliferation of microplastics in the ocean is also spreading contamination, some of what had previously been sequestered in frozen states, they said.

“The convergence of climate, chemicals and plastics has not been fully appreciated by the scientific community or climate-justice activists,” Miller said.

The eight-nation Arctic Council is one organization that has made the connection between climate change and persistent organic pollutants, known as POPs.

A report issued at a meeting last year of high-level officials from council nations showed how climate change has eroded some of the progress made since the mid-1990s by international bans and phaseouts of dangerous chemicals. In some places of the Arctic, the report said, POPs are even increasing in concentration after earlier declines.