Remote parts of Mont. park said polluted

Remote parts of Mont. park said polluted

Pollution has tainted even the most remote areas of Glacier National Park, and some fish in backcountry waters are so contaminated they could endanger the wildlife eating them, a federal scientist has found.

Dixon Landers of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency led a three-year study examining pollution that travels in the air.

Landers first hiked into Glacier in 2003. Later he and his team used more than a dozen mules to transport some 2,000 pounds of scientific gear to places such as Snyder Lake, high above the park's McDonald Valley. The researchers took samples that included water, lake sediment, vegetation and fish.

Water tests revealed contamination such as a pesticide that is not used widely in the United States but is applied in Canada, and pesticides that are banned in North America but still are used in some other parts of the world.

Other scientists who have studied water and snow chemistry in Glacier have looked mostly for the "dirty dozen," consisting of pesticides known collectively as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. Landers' work searched for more than 100 semi-volatile organic compounds, or SOCs.

Both POPs and SOCs have relatively low molecular weights and volatilize easily in the atmosphere when put under heat. They move around the globe, scrubbing out of the air in rain or snow and then vaporizing back into the sky during warmth. Glacier is the kind of cold spot in which they can become trapped.

Landers arrived at the park suspecting it might be a sort of sponge for contaminants transported by powerful jet streams, high-elevation winds known to carry sand and dust from China's Gobi Desert all the way to North American soils. An air mass can move from the Far East to Washington's Olympic National Park in just five days and deliver chemicals unused for decades in this part of the world, he said.

Often concentrations have been small, perhaps too small to be of concern, he indicated.

He wondered what chemicals are at Glacier, whether they posed a risk, where they came from, where they accumulate and how best to measure them.

Studying fish is one way to find answers because chemicals tend to accumulate in fatty tissue and eggs. Some toxins that were small, airborne concentrations build to much higher concentrations within fish and move up the food chain, Landers said.

He found that "for certain contaminants, wildlife exposure thresholds are exceeded for several different species that feed on fish."

Data from Glacier eventually will be compiled with information from eight other parks in the West, providing a baseline for measuring future changes.