Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants

Bernadette's chilly dictionary of polar words

Bernadette Hince with original card files, holding possible quotations for her polar dictionary, Cold Words. ‘Greenlandisation’, sea ice, permafrost: BERNADETTE HINCE looks at how polar words explain a changing world. Most of us know there’s more than one version of English. What English people call a tap, Americans call a faucet; New Zealand’s jandals are Australia’s thongs. As well as British English, there are regional versions of Australian…

Polar bears in peril — biopsies shed light on Arctic pollution crisis

High above the icy expanse of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, a helicopter hovers, a tranquilizer dart is fired, and a polar bear collapses into the snow — not as a trophy, but as a test subject. In a groundbreaking mission, scientists are collecting fat biopsies from these apex predators to study how persistent industrial pollutants, like PFAS chemicals, are silently infiltrating the Arctic food chain.

A Norwegian scientific expedition, which AFP was able to follow, carried out in April the first fatty tissue biopsies on polar bears in Svalbard, the Arctic, to assess the impact of pollutants on their health.

Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants

With one foot braced on the helicopter's landing skid, a veterinarian lifted his air rifle, took aim and fired a tranquiliser dart at a polar bear.

An international team of scientists studies polar bears in Svalbard to analyze how climate change and pollutants affect their health and behavior.

In Svalbard, researchers are making new discoveries in the fat of polar bears.