"Michael Ikonomou, a research scientist with the Canadian government's Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., has developed techniques for fingerprinting contaminants that are tricky to find, including PBDEs. Because scientists began looking for PBDEs in the environment only in recent years, he's applied the technique to samples that have been frozen for decades, including the samples he is holding here. Ikonomou found that PBDE levels in seal blubber have been doubling every few years since the early 1980s. Asked where PBDEs are being found, Ikonomou replies: ""Everywhere. We find them in the dust on top of mountains."" Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer"
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