Researchers: Polar bears ingesting toxins

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Researchers say that toxic chemicals from flame retardants are building up in the tissues of polar bears.

An international group of wildlife scientists have found that chemicals in the retardants are carried north from the United States by the wind. In the Arctic, they become increasingly concentrated in the fatty tissues of animals as they move up the food chain, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Polar bears are also threatened by the melting of Arctic sea ice. The bears are, in some respects, marine mammals, dependent on the ice to get them close to seals, their major food source.