Toxics

As a society we have seen cancer rates in Canada increase by 1% each and every year. Increasing awareness of high-risk products to protect Canadians from unnecessary health risks is paramount to Sierra Club Canada’s Health and Environment program area.

The immediate needs of those living in toxic sites such as the Sydney Tar ponds, fall under the Toxics and Human Health program. Sierra Club Canada has demonstrated a continued commitment to the problem of toxic sites in Canada by encouraging the federal government to create a Clean Canada Fund to clean up toxic areas.

The Toxics and Human Health program is committed to supporting, assisting and protecting the citizens of contaminated communities like those in Sydney, NS. A study on household dust, funded by Sierra Club Canada, in homes surrounding Canada's worst hazardous waste sight, the Sydney tar ponds, was published in Environmental Health Perspectives. It concluded that lead, arsenic, and PAH...
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Campaigns

Sydney Tar Ponds
Toxic Sludge
Toxics Awareness and Education
Oil Sands Independent Toxins Report
2 Sep, 2010   |   Excerpted from the report: "We show that the oil sands industry releases the 13 elements considered priority pollutants (PPE) under the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act, via air and water, to the Athabasca River and its watershed. In the 2008 snowpack, all PPE except selenium were greater near oil sands developments than at more remote sites. Bitumen upgraders...
Renner Dismisses Oilsands Toxins Report
1 Sep, 2010   |   EDMONTON — Alberta's environment minister disputed the conclusions of a controversial oilsands study Tuesday, saying it's likely that increased toxins in the Athabasca River are due to natural causes. But Rob Renner admitted he hadn't read the paper and could point to no peer-reviewed data or studies to back up his assertion. "My scientists are telling me that the...
Canada Tar Sands Industry Ignoring Toxic River Pollution
1 Sep, 2010   |   Canada's rapidly expanding tar sands industry is causing the toxic pollution of its rivers, but the government of Alberta continues to deny there is a problem. A two-year study of the Athabasca River by ecologists at the University of Alberta found levels of arsenic, copper, cadmium, lead, mercury, nickel, silver and zinc far in excess of national guidelines downstream from industrial...
New Study Links Tar Sands to Carcinogens
31 Aug, 2010   |   A new study led by University of Alberta ecologist Dr. David Schindler and published in the renowned Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes some alarming conclusions about the water near the tar sands. After monitoring 60 sites along the Athabasca River and its tributaries, Dr. Schindler concluded the tar sands have added carcinogenic toxins to the area environment....
Tar Sands Giant Total falls short on Green Promises
30 Aug, 2010   |   In addition to highlighting areas of concern, Sierra Club also highlights the technology that Total originally said would be part of the mining proposal but has since been removed. Total’s updated proposal flies in the face of several provincial and federal statements to eliminate toxic tailing waste ponds, move away from open pit mining projects, and to use carbon capture and storage...
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