( The Hill ) — Alaska’s Yukon River may be shuttling much more than just water as it traverses the state and empties into the Bering Sea.
A California-led research team has now found evidence that climate change-induced permafrost melting is unleashing long-sequestered mercury deposits into this critical freshwater artery.
The release of the metal, which has been stored in the permafrost for millennia, now poses an environmental and public health hazard to about 5 million people living in the Arctic zone, according to the study, published on Thursday in Environmental Research Letters .
More than 3 million of those individuals reside in areas where permafrost is expected to disappear entirely by 2050, the researchers noted.
“There could be this giant mercury bomb in the Arctic waiting to explode,” said co-author Josh West, professor of Earth sciences and environmental studies at the University of Southern California, in a statement .
Earth’s natural atmospheric circulation tends to transport pollutants to higher latitudes, resulting in a northbound buildup of mercury — which then moves from air to ground to water, West explained.