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Warming could release toxic disasters from Arctic permafrost
New research finds that thousands of industrial dump sites could be set free by rising temperatures.
CLIMATEWIRE | A study published in Nature estimates that at least 13,000 contaminated sites are locked in the Arctic's thick layer of frozen soil, which spans multiple countries that are rich in fossil fuels including Russia. Alaska and Canada have more than 3,600 toxic dumps, the study notes.
The study paints a dire picture as global warming threatens to raise temperatures worldwide. At least 3,400 polluted areas with drilling and mining waste, heavy metals, spilled oil or radioactive waste could thaw by 2100 under a low-emissions scenario, according to the study. These sites contain toxins such as mercury, lead, petroleum or arsenic, potentially polluting nearby soil and watersheds.
“For decades, industrial and economic development of the Arctic was based on the assumption that permafrost would serve as a permanent and stable platform,” the authors wrote. “Past industrial practices also assumed that perennially frozen ground would function as long-term containment for solid and liquid industrial waste due to its properties as a hydrological barrier.”
In warmer regions, environmental regulations require companies to seal off contamination from nearby waterways. Arctic mines, oil extraction sites and military bases, however, had been dumping toxic waste without any efforts to contain contamination, said Moritz Langer, the lead author of the study and an associate professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. The assumption had been that frozen ground would work as “a natural lining.“
“They were legal, and they are still legal,” Langer said of the sites.
In Alaska, for example, landfills are not required to be lined and sealed off from soil, he said. The state has only six lined landfills, while 197 of them are unsealed, according to Waste360, a networking platform for waste management industry professionals.
The study used two North American databases that track pollution events in Alaska and Canada — the Contaminated Sites Program for Alaska and the Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory for Canada. Authors then extrapolated the number of polluted sites in Russia, based on local media coverage of environmental disasters.
More than 70 percent of the polluted areas are in Russia, the study estimates. The authors' review of engineering literature from the Soviet years showed that radioactive fluids had been injected into Arctic permafrost to store toxic waste, Langer said.
The study is the first attempt to gauge the scale of the toxic waste problem that the world faces as the planet warms, said Langer. It offers a conservative estimate of rising temperatures that ignores feedback effects where every fraction of a degree in global warming accelerates the speed of permafrost thawing. The researchers did not estimate potentially broader damages that could occur if the land around the sites were to thaw.
“We most likely see here only the tip of the iceberg,” Langer said. “We know that our industrial [database] is not complete. We lack a lot of knowledge in order to really make a proper and sound risk assessment on the problem.”
