Recently, there has been an increased focus on the negative effects on arctic organisms of organochlorines that originate in the industrialized parts of the world. Persistant substances such as DDT and PCB, Persistent Organic Pollutants often referred to as POPs ("Persistent Organic Pollutants"), become concentrated in food chains, from lower to higher trophic levels. As apex predators in the Arctic marine ecosystem, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) accquire relatively large burdens of POPs because their diet consists primarily of seal blubber and meat. Bears in Svalbard, the Western Russian Arctic and East Greenland have relatively high concentrations of POPs, and their levels are high enough to raise concern about effects on health and reproductive performance. Ten cases of female polar bears with deformities in their external sex organs (pseudohermaphrodites) have been recorded at Svalbard since 1990. These deformities are suspected of being caused by high levels of POPs.

In 1999 the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark (Department of Arctic Environment; Roskilde) and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (Nuuk), initiated a study to assess the effects of POPs on internal and external organs of polar bears in East Greenland. The study involved:

(1) obtaining information from the Greenland polar bear hunters concerning their observations of bears with aberrant organs or behavior.

(2) Skulls and organ analyzing bone, organ and other tissue samples from 100 polar bears killed by hunters from the municipality of Ittoqqortoormiit/ Scoresbysund in Central East Greenland.

(3) Historic skulls comparing frequencies of morphological anomalies in a historic and the recent sample of polar bear skulls from East Greenland.

For further information on interveiws of Inuit hunters see Institute of Natural Ressources in Greenlandwww.natur.gl .