Welcome to the tar ponds where life is a political and scientific experiment: Sierra Club exposes the government's complete lack of compassion for those forced to live in Canada's most heavily contaminated community

It is hard to believe that things can have gotten worse since I wrote the article "Welcome to Atlantic Canada where life is cheap." But it has.

To recap, it was a year ago that Sierra Club of Canada and our local Sydney, Nova Scotia members were fighting to get access to test results of soil taken in the fall of 2000 from within one of the neighbourhoods adjacent to the coke ovens. The numbers were withheld and massaged and finally released in late April. The text surrounding the test results attempted to minimize the findings but, as we had suspected, the results were explosive. Nearly every sample had revealed levels of contamination with arsenic, cyanide or cancer-causing PAHs (polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons) at levels significantly above levels set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). One sample of arsenic was 80 times the acceptable limit of 12 mg/kg at 839 mg/kg.

Despite the reassuring rhetoric, local residents were alarmed. The provincial daily, the Chronicle Herald, ran the test results next to the CCME level. Benzene is acceptable at 0.5 mg/kg. Test results in the neighbourhood were 20 to 30 times higher. Nearly every test result had numerous toxic substances above the acceptable level.

No one in the community expected the government to take action and families were terrified. In the past, high test levels have been met with "risk assessment" as a tactic to calm public fears. Critics of risk assessment have pointed out that the computer generated models of potential exposure are open to manipulation through the choice of assumptions and levels of exposure hypothesized. Meanwhile real people were dying in a very non-hypothetical way.

In desperation, I decided to go on a hunger strike. For 17 days last May, I sat in front of Parliament Hill, ingesting nothing but water and Gatorade, demanding that the Minister of Health commit to relocating families at risk. I was hugely relieved when Alan Rock promised to move people as long as further tests demonstrated a health risk. On the basis of his promise, I ended the fast. It was the first government promise to relocate people, and even though further tests were required, I was confident the neighbourhoods closest to the site would be moved.

I was wrong. The hunger strike accomplished nothing. Over the course of the summer of 2001 millions of dollars were spent in further testing. Soil, water, urine and blood was tested. None of the information was released until risk assessments had been performed.

The first risk assessment was released in mid-summer, setting out new "made in Sydney standards" for acute risk from the chemicals permeating the neighbourhood.

Instead of 12 mg/kg for arsenic, the new Sydney standard was 813. Instead of 0.5 mk/kg for benzene the new Sydney standard was 20 times higher.

Hopes for relocation began to fade. The promised decision date of August 31 came and went without any announcement. It was not until early December that the final chronic risk assessment was released. Predictably, it reported that it was no more dangerous to live next to the tar ponds and coke ovens than most urban areas in Canada. Having announced that no families would be moved, the government offered to remediate the backyard soil of almost every resident in the four block area on which tests focused. The cost of soil removal was $100,000. The homes are worth nothing. Any resident would happily move for much less than the cost of soil remediation.

The government has put families in a diabolical moral dilemma. They can accept the offer of soil remediation, but since there is no health risk, according to officials, spending $100,000 to cart away poisonous soil is only on offer as a way to reassure people who are, essentially, worried about nothing. Of course, if they accept the soil remediation, there is no chance of ever being moved - even if their proximity to the toxic waste re-contaminates their yard. If they do not accept the soil remediation, their children continue to be further exposed.

Meanwhile, residents who on principle did not volunteer for more testing in the early summer of 2001 - "I want to be moved now, not have more tests!" - are out of luck. Knowing their neighbours have sky-high contamination and are being offered a clean-up, they are now told they have missed their chance to have the soil tested. Can anyone in the rest of Canada imagine such a manipulative and heartless government decision? Poisoned if you do, poisoned if you don't.

The health risk assessment was quickly followed by another government document. This one confirmed that Sydney residents have the worst state of health of any community in Canada. In reviewing the contributing factors, the pollution from the largest toxic waste site in Canada was not even mentioned. Instead, the blame was laid squarely where government wants it on the residents themselves. They are guilty of being poor, under-educated, smoking too much and not knowing enough to avail themselves of the of the health care system to undergo routine check-ups.

In response, the Sydney members of Sierra Club of Canada, supported by the national organization and a grant from a concerned foundation have launched the Peoples' Health Commission. Co-sponsored by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, the Peoples' Health Commission is conducting its own health study. A flock of volunteers have been going from door to door in those areas closest to the tar ponds and coke ovens, conducting a thorough interview to obtain a complete picture of the health of family members. After all these years, no one has ever asked the residents how they are actually feeling. No one has ever assessed the health of people living on top of the contamination. All the statistics of ill health come from the entire Sydney area, potentially masking even higher rates of cancer, birth defects, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses associated with pollution from the affected area.

Nothing has gotten better in Sydney. The only people who benefitted from my hunger strike are those who practice science for hire, prostituting their professions and selling their souls to protect the rights of chemicals and condemn innocents to diminished health, earlier death and the added humiliation of bearing the blame for their own ill-health.

Elizabeth May is Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada.

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