Silent Snow

Starred review from February 28, 2005
In 1999, environmental journalist Cone was awarded a Pew fellowship to examine the Arctic paradox: "How," she wondered, "could the Arctic, so innocent, primitive, so natural... be home to the most contaminated people on the planet?" What she discovered is that pollution is as global as the economy, and that industrialized nations—with their "Save the whales!" movements—are poisoning those very whales with chemical drift. In clear, engaging prose, she explains how PCBs leaking from a Chicago electrical transformer accumulate dramatically in sea mammals and people thousands of miles away. Traveling from Greenland to Alaska, she quickly finds that Power Bars and a down parka are inadequate to the Arctic, and that Inuit and Inupiat peoples rely on whales and seals for food and clothing because "nothing else is perfectly suited to their environment." In this sparsely populated territory, scientists have documented the world's swiftest ecosystem crash and mother's milk so chemically contaminated that it "could be classified as hazardous waste." But solutions are hard to find: there are no alternatives to replace contaminated food, it has become harder to ban chemicals in the U.S., and new contaminants are being introduced. Cone's sympathy with the peoples of the Arctic and her admiration for the harsh, beautiful world in which they live make this an inspiring book. And we all carry some level of the same toxins; as one Inuit says, "The chemical threat is the ultimate threat... it reaches everywhere in the world." Agent, Russ Galen.