December 11, 2006

Getting the 'baddest of the bad' toxins out of you

Donna Jacobs

Ottawa Citizen Special

Politics has always been a "blood sport." Now, sporting political players are fielding blood test results on how "toxic" they are.

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, Health Minister Tony Clement, Liberal environment critic John Godfrey and NDP leader Jack Layton underwent blood and urine tests for 103 pollutants and contaminants.

The imminent release of the results by Toronto-based Environmental Defence will be the third in its "Toxic Nation" campaign. They, like all the others, will reveal specific pollution levels in key politicians -- and by extension, in their electors.

In 2005, in a much-publicized demonstration of people-pollution, Environmental Defence submitted blood samples from 11 people across country. They were looking for 88 chemicals.

They found 60 of them -- many with multiple health risks: 41 are suspected carcinogens, 53 can disrupt reproduction and development of children, 27 can disrupt hormones and 21 are tied to respiratory illness.

Earlier this year, Environmental Defence had the blood and urine of five families -- six adults and seven children -- tested for 68 chemicals. Researchers found 38 carcinogens, 23 hormone disruptors, 38 toxic to reproduction and development of children, 19 neurotoxins and 12 toxic to the respiratory system.

Among those chemicals whose levels were higher in children than adults were phthalates -- soft plastics found in many cosmetics, perfumes and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) consumer and building products. (Results are available at www.toxicnation.ca)

The compounds tested for in their sample of Canadians, says Environmental Defence, are now found in drinking water, soil, household dust, meat and dairy products, human blood and breast milk and in wildlife. They disrupt hormones and can cause birth defects in male reproductive organs.

Aaron Freeman was recently hired as Environmental Defence policy director. He's also a part-time law professor, author and former Nader Raider in Ralph Nader's Washington D.C. Center for the Study of Responsive Law.

The job timing is good, given the parliamentary review of Canada's key environmental law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the proposed clean air legislation.

CEPA needs timelines, he says, to capitalize on the Canadian government's just-completed gargantuan categorization of about 23,000 chemicals in Canada. The analysis looked for "the baddest of the bad," he says, "and produced a prioritized list of products that need regulation."

On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled a plan to crack down on toxic chemicals, placing the onus on companies that produce 200 of the most harmful substances to prove that they are safely managed. If they can't do so, the government will restrict or ban these substances. The $300-million plan also includes a list of chemicals that will be evaluated over the next few years, which could result in consumer products being pulled from shelves.

"This announcement is a significant first step," says Mr. Freeman. "It provides an action plan for some of the most serious chemicals. The next step is to make sure the overall system for regulating toxic substances protects the health and environment of Canadians.

"The Conservative government has committed to taking action on key chemicals. But action shouldn't depend on political decisions. We should embed the requirement to act in CEPA."

Chemicals can still sit in regulatory limbo for years along with increasingly stale scientific studies, says Mr. Freeman. "If it's highly toxic," he says, "we should have a systemic legal requirement for getting it off the market and a plan for more benign substitutes." He says CEPA should address vulnerable ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes. The preamble to the environment act "talks about taking an ecosystem-based approach," he says, but "that's the last time the word appears in the legislation." As for a strengthened act, he says, given the parliamentary committee review under way, committee reports, cabinet review, parliamentary readings and a possible federal election, "it will be 2009 before it's in force, if we're lucky." Further, Mr. Freeman notes, industry leaders want the act "to be reviewed every 10 years instead of the current five. Practically speaking, that would turn it into a 15-year review. For a field that is evolving so rapidly, this makes absolutely no sense."

If he is exasperated, he doesn't show it. He says that impatience is "an indulgence."

His temperament is no doubt mellowed by his personal interests. He's an aspiring bagpiper looking for a teacher since his last one moved away. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of me," he laughs. And he's a competitive athlete.

For a decade, he's been an avid ultimate Frisbee player. Ultimate combines soccer, football, netball and basketball and relies not on referees, but on the "Spirit of the Game" for fair play and the joy of play.

(Ottawa-Carleton Ultimate Association is the world's largest league, whose 338 teams and 5,000 members play in the world's "first and only multi-field sports facility" designed for ultimate and self-financed at that.)

In previous, less-busy years, he's competed -- and twice of four times completed -- the 160-kilometre Canadian Ski Marathon from Lachute to Buckingham, Que., held each February.

Whether it's logging hours on the gym elliptical trainer or weights circuit, or it's environmental campaigns, he sets goals. "If we've identified a substance as being extremely harmful, to meet those criteria, let's stop using it. Let's stop putting it in our products. Let's stop emitting it into the atmosphere. And let's work internationally with our neighbours to remove the threat."

He cites two examples of persistent, toxic and bioaccumulative compounds that richly deserve to be phased out. The Conservative government is moving to restrict them, he says, and he hopes the restrictions will include a ban on these substances in consumer products, including imports. PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) is a subgroup of these chemicals, used in some (not all) non-stick cookware, stain repellants, nail polish and windshield washer fluid. The U.S. has a voluntary phase-out. "This is the new PCB," says Mr. Freeman. He refers to the analysis by Dr. Kapil Khatter, director of health and environment for Environmental Defence, that shows that PFOS are more persistent than DDT or PCBs. They travel thousands of kilometres. They're bioaccumulative: Arctic mammals such as polar bears are among the most contaminated creatures on Earth. In animals, they've been found to cause cancer of the breast, liver and thyroid and to damage the pancreas, brain and immune system. In people, exposure increased cancer rates of the bladder and male reproductive and digestive systems..

Even if PFOS were banned effective today, it would take an average eight years, says Dr. Khatter, to rid our bodies of half their PFOS levels. Sweden called for a worldwide ban, the U.S. banned them in 2000, exempting only aviation, micro-electronics and photography. Canada is not known to be a manufacturer, but it is a direct importer.

The other compounds that should be banned, says Mr. Freeman, are brominated flame retardants (BFRs), common in upholstered furniture and curtains, carpets and electronic equipment. They contain chemicals classed as highly persistent, bioaccumulative and suspected to disrupt hormones, cause cancer and reproductive developmental disorders. They may damage the thyroid, which controls brain development, and thus may cause learning disabilities and behavioural problems. BFRs are found in house dust, human blood and breast milk.

Canada is falling by the wayside on pollution control, Mr. Freeman says. "We're in the bottom three of industrialized countries for regulating all ozone-depleting substances, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and greenhouse gases." Within the past decade, pollution on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes has been reduced by 45 per cent by industry, versus Canadian industry's two-per-cent reduction, he says. And, he adds, since Canada no longer has government testing centres -- and to test each new chemical would be an impractical goal -- industry does its own testing to rigorous government-set scientific standards.

"The tradeoff should be that the onus is shifted onto industry to prove products are not harmful. Europe's pending REACH system has taken that tack, he says: "If you can't prove through data that the product is safe, you don't get to market," he says. "No data, no market."

Toxic chemicals are linked to some cancers, birth defects and low birth weight, autism, and learning and behavioural disabilities.

Health Canada found that 12 per cent of children in Canada have asthma, possibly a four-fold increase since the 1970s.

Among young adults, aged 20-44, thyroid cancer has been rising at a rate of 4.2 per cent in men and by 6.6 per cent in women annually. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has risen by 3.5 and 4.2 per cent, respectively; lung cancer by 1.9 percent; brain cancer by two per cent in women; and testicular cancer by 1.7 per cent.

By the Ontario Medical Association's conservative tally, air pollution alone -- ground-level ozone and fine-particle pollution -- prematurely kills more than 5,800 people in the province every year, triggers more than 16,800 hospitals admissions, 60,000 emergency room visits and more than 29 million minor illness days at a combined price tag of $7.8 billion, estimated to increase to $12.9 billion by 2026.

"Years of government inaction has meant that many chemicals have overstayed their welcome," he says. "If the Conservatives use their power to remove these toxic substances from the market, we can cut this price tag significantly."