Industry Alert on Oil-Sands

"This report confirms what we have suspected about the association between the environmental contaminants from oil-sands production and cancer and other illness in our community."
"We are greatly alarmed and demand further research to expand on these findings. It is time government does something. Enough is enough."
Steve Courtoreille, chief, Mikisew Cree First Nation

Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (left), Steve Courtoreille, chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation (centre), and University of Manitoba researcher Stephane McLachlan, spoke about the study at a news conference in Edmonton on Monday. (CBC ) 

Previously, any purported link between oil-sands operations in Alberta's Fort McMurray area and nearby First Nations reserves have been discounted; the number of cancer cases said to be no larger for the size of the communities than anywhere else in the country; no evidence of any link existing and perhaps other denials. Perhaps they were premature.

The results of a new study now claims there is a definite link in pollution caused in the oil-sands with elevated cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan. According to researcher Stephane McLachlan, during a news conference in Edmonton, there is "clear and worrisome" links on the effect of health in downstream communities to the oil-sands project. "Something unique is happening in Fort Chipewyan, especially around cancer."

The University of Manitoba study conducted in collaboration with the Athabasca Chipewyan and Mikisew Cree First Nations has found fish and animals consumed as part of a traditional diet contained high concentrations of contaminants. That unusually high concentration has been linked to contaminants resulting during the extraction and upgrading of bitumen; tarry oil products.

Among 94 people interviewed as part of the three-year $1-million study paid for in part by Health Canada, and peer-reviewed by its own scientists, twenty-three cases of cancer were reported. The report had not yet been seen by the provincial Health Ministry, but it plans to review the findings.

Samples taken from beaver, duck, fish, moose and muskrats were found to contain high concentrations of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and selenium. Those concentrations were sufficiently high to present as a danger to young children. Not adult cancers, however...?

The people of Fort Chipewyan have long suspected links between industrial development and their health issues. Statistics released early in 2014 by the Alberta Cancer Board confirmed the presence of clusters of rare bile duct cancer and cervical cancer in the community, located 300 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.

"Industry is really supportive of any information that leads to the body of evidence", commented Greg Stringham of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers who also stated that one previous study had failed to find a connection between oil-sands extraction and elevated cancer rates. If this link is validated, however, his group will have their work cut out for them.

There is, in this story, an echo of another, earlier story out of Ontario, on the Grassy Narrows reserve, when high levels of mercury were found, in the 1970s impacting on the health of reserve residents, and named after the infamous Japanese Minamata disease disaster of exposure to high mercury levels. Minamata was a small Japanese fishing village; fish derived from the waters there were high in mercury contaminating those who ate the fish with a morbid neurological disease.

In the two Ojibwa band reserves near Kenora, Ontario, the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog reserves, a chemical plant operating out of Dryden, Ontario, upstream from the reserves dumped mercury daily from their pulp and paper operations into the Wabigoon River, whose net result was the mercury contamination of fish and other wildlife, wreaking havoc on the health of the aboriginals whose diet consisted of those fish and animals