Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Canada’s battle against toxic pollution has stalled so badly that the recorded chemical load being dumped into water, land and air has jumped by half since 1995.
The figures, which compare only the same chemicals from year to year and from 1995 to 2002, come from government-run and privately owned industries that are required by law to report them to the federal government’s National Pollutant Release Inventory.
“The federal government’s efforts to clean up pollution are failing,” said Richard Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, one of two non-governmental organizations that examined the data and wrote a report on them to be released today at http://www.pollutionwatch.org.
When every reportable chemical is added up, including a new batch published for the first time in this report, more than four billion kilograms of toxic material were released from industrial facilities in 2002. Ninety-two per cent of those went straight into the air. Paul Muldoon, executive director of the second group, Canadian Environmental Law Association, said the trend runs against 1999 federal legislation, which commits the government to preventing pollution.
Environment Minister Stéphane Dion was unable to comment on the report’s findings yesterday because he got an advance copy of it late in the day.
Mr. Muldoon said he is surprised by the extent of the problem because he had heard federal officials and industry captains congratulate themselves so often on having taken on the chemicals and won. “There’s this rhetoric that this problem has been resolved, but the data don’t support that,” Mr. Muldoon said, adding that while some of the biggest companies have taken great strides to cut toxic pollution, Canada as a whole has not kept pace with other industrial countries in this effort.
He pointed to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development environmental performance review of Canada released this fall that slammed Canada for doing less than other industrialized countries to combat traditional air pollutants. Many parts of Canada have unacceptable air quality, the review said. On the positive side, today’s report shows that a smaller load of chemicals linked to cancer is being released into the air (down 39 per cent between 1995 and 2002) and into water (down 9 per cent over the same span). But more than seven million kilograms of the cancer-related substances were released into the air in 2002, along with another 176,000 kg into water.
Mr. Muldoon called this finding “repugnant,” and noted that economical ways to prevent these chemicals from entering the air, land and water are in common use in other industrialized countries. The report lists the 10 facilities that sent the most carcinogens into the air.
First on the list is the Toronto facility of Vitafoam Products Canada Ltd., which put out 265,340 kg of the chemicals in 2002. The company could not be reached for comment. Second is Inco Ltd.’s smelter complex in Copper Cliff, Ont., near Sudbury, which put out 226,907 kg.
Inco spokesman Steve Mitchell said that since 2002, the company has invested several million dollars into cutting emissions of metals at that plant, which make up the main chemical group of concern. By 2008, the company will have reduced these by half at the By 2008, the company will have reduced these by half at the Copper Cliff plant compared with the 2002 levels, Mr. Mitchell said. The third facility on the list is the Miramichi plant owned by Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd. in New Brunswick, which emitted 199,553 kg in 2002.
Company spokesman Larry Lemon said the data as a whole are difficult to interpret. That’s because different facilities are included in different years and production at each varies. He also said that, in New Brunswick, the measurements of toxic chemicals are taken out of the stack rather than on the ground as they are in Ontario. Mr. Muldoon pointed to new figures in this report cataloguing chemicals that interact to create smog and acid rain. These have been associated with respiratory problems such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.
They were not reported until 2002, and have just been released along with the other numbers from 2002 for this report. They show that a total of 3.7 billion kg of toxic substances that have an impact on the respiratory system were emitted into the air that year from industry alone. That doesn’t include those emitted outside the country that make their way into Canada’s air.
Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory came about as a response to the Bhopal industrial disaster 20 years ago this week when a leaked chemical cocktail killed about 18,000 people. It harmed half a million and has left a legacy of toxic chemicals that critics say are leaching into the groundwater to this day. Tallying airborne chemicals
To view the top 10 facilities releasing carcinogens into the air in Canada in 2002, visit the pollution watch website
There was one industry from the Ottawa Watershed on the top 10 list and that was Sandvik Materials Technology, located in Arnprior Ontario. There they operate a tube production unit that released 185,186 kg of carcinogens into the air in 2002.