One of the oceans' most intelligent and powerful hunters are under serious threat, new research shows.
Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBS is an organic compound used in electrics, plastics and paints.
The pollution it is causing in the oceans could wipe out 50 percent of the world's Orca population within 30-to-50 years.
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The research published in the Science journal shows this is particularly alarming for New Zealand's orca.
"For Killer Whales, it's just basically, it's an apocalypse," Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London says.
As the apex predator of the ocean, Killer Whales rule the sea. But our chemical footprint is proving to be the ultimate killer.
"Our work shows that actually there's a huge, huge problem, not just with pcbs, not just in the UK and europe, but all over the world," Mr Jepson says.
Meaning, New Zealand is not exempt.
Marine Biologist Ingrid Visser has been studying New Zealand Orca for more than 20 years and says we need to take this research very seriously.
She says New Zealand orcas we have the highest rate of pcb chemicals recorded for any animal species in the southern hemisphere.
"This isn't just going to go away because we've stopped making them, we have to make sure they're not leaching out of our landfills for instance."
Many countries have been banning PCBs since the 1970s due to their extreme toxicity.
However, 80 percent of the one million tonnes of PCB produced globally are yet to be destroyed.
Instead they are leaching from the land into in the world's oceans and is being absorbed by marine plankton.
That plankton is then eaten by fish and goes up the food chain until it gets to the Orca who end up with the highest and most toxic doses.
Ms Visser says female Orcas have a lower level of concentration only because their milk pass the concentration onto the calves.
Newshub.
