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Summer 2007
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Making the case for better pollution data in indigenous communities
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By Ron Orol
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Click to enlarge
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A close-up view using the CEC’s mapping tool for Google Earth shows the Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve’s proximity to industrial facilities reporting pollutant release and transfer information.
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In 2003, Suncor Energy Inc. proposed setting up an ethanol plant outside the Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve close to Sarnia, Ontario, and Port Huron, Michigan.
At the time, Suncor already operated a refinery and petrochemical plant across the street from homes on the reserve. The decision to add an ethanol facility prompted Ronald Plain, a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, to take action. The prospect of additional factories releasing chemicals in the vicinity was too much for him to ignore. Plain and others on the reserve succeeded in blocking the construction of the ethanol plant.
Four years later, Plain says, “We are now in a position here where we are afraid to let our children go outdoors. I want to make sure that this doesn’t happen anymore.”
The Aamjiwnaang First Nation is made up of roughly 2,000 people living on and off a reserve that is situated in close proximity to dozens of factories, mostly in the steel, petrochemical and forestry sectors. In the Sarnia area, described by locals as “chemical valley,” Plain counts 42 factories located close to the reserve and 10 more nearby in the United States. Smokestacks on the horizon blow dark plumes into the sky while a pungent sulfurous odor of rotten eggs can often be smelled in the vicinity.
Within the community, there is a growing, yet often vague, understanding that nearby pollution is taking its toll on the environment and people living on or near the reserve.
But efforts to establish a scientifically verifiable cause and effect relationship between factory emissions and health problems, including reproductive disorders, headaches and cancer, have always reached a dead end. Eventually, Plain says, he began to seek out scientifically supportable data on the exact chemicals and types of other pollutants affecting his environment. That desire led Plain to the CEC in an attempt to obtain support for his research on chemical emissions in the Sarnia area.
The CEC commissioned Plain in 2006 to complete an informal case study that involved interviews with local politicians and residents of Aamjiwnaang, as well as the residents of another Canada-US border community, Ketegaunseebee First Nation, regarding their awareness and use of pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) databases.
PRTRs provide data on the types and sources of emissions from facilities in the industrial sectors required to report to the registers. Each country in North America, with the very recent addition of Mexico, has a PRTR system: Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI); the US Toxics Release Inventory (TRI); and Mexico’s Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (RETC).
Earlier that year, the CEC began talks with indigenous people in the three countries to evaluate their environmental needs and how PRTR data could help them understand and address their situation. Using PRTR data from Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory and the CEC’s own Taking Stock matched database of North American facilities, Plain could begin analyzing the environmental pollutants being released in the vicinity of the Aamjiwnaang community. So far, he has identified 105 chemicals with potentially wide-ranging health impacts that are being emitted near the reserve. Plain added that he suspects there are additional chemical emissions with negative health implications that he and others on the reserve have not yet identified.
The CEC also contracted Paula Stigler to study whether aboriginal communities in the Mexico-United States border area were aware of PRTR data and interested in using them. This study revealed that the indigenous people of the Rincon Reservation in San Diego County were interested in learning more about PRTR data available, particularly from the US Toxics Release Inventory, to evaluate a plastics facility located in their community (TRI data revealed that this facility releases styrene and acetone).
Both Plain and Stigler discussed the conclusions of their case studies at the CEC’s annual PRTR Consultative Group meeting in San Diego, in November 2006. This generated interest in creating an environmental network to bring together indigenous people, policymakers and environmentalists to discuss issues of concern to native populations. As reported elsewhere in this TRIO, the CEC’s September 2007 Joint Public Advisory Committee meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba, will further explore this idea while discussing environmental issues of concern to indigenous communities across North America.
For Plain, the CEC contribution and PRTR data have been invaluable. Yet, he adds, it is only the first step. “The PRTR data helped us understand what is raining down upon us,” Plain says. “We want to do our own independent monitoring but we don’t have access to the plants to get those data.”
Hiram Sarabia-Ramirez, a research associate at the University of California in San Diego who helped Stigler with aspects of her study, argues that indigenous populations are particularly susceptible to certain environmental harms because of their particular way of interacting with the environment. Some indigenous persons are more likely to consume fish or wild game as a main staple of their diet, he points out, potentially exposing them to higher concentrations of contaminants, such as mercury or other toxics.
“Urban lifestyle exposures are very different from the environmental issues people experience on tribal lands,” Sarabia-Ramirez says. “Environmentalists and regulators should consider the additional exposure certain indigenous people have to such contaminants.”
Sarabia-Ramirez points out that he uses the PRTR database to identify industrial sources of pollution, such as dioxins, on tribal lands located near the Mexico-United States border. At the University of California, Sarabia-Ramirez researches new technologies for cleaning up environmental problems. He hopes PRTR data can help him with this task.
A major problem for northern indigenous people is a so-called “grasshopper” effect, which is an evaporation-condensation phenomenon that transports persistent organic pollutants released in southern areas to contaminate land, water and fish in northern regions. Jules Blais, an associate professor and environmental toxicologist at the University of Ottawa, says emissions released in the production of brominated flame retardants for computers and other products, evaporate into the atmosphere and condense in remote northern regions, where indigenous people have the greatest likelihood of being exposed to them. These pollutants, which are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances, build up in each step of the food chain until the top carnivores, such as seals, foxes, polar bears and humans, harbor levels that may be dangerous to them. He adds that this is another problem that regulators and other stakeholders should consider when evaluating environmental concerns of indigenous people. “It creates a social and ethical dilemma,” Blais says.
Armed with PRTR data, Plain continues his efforts to shine a spotlight on environmental issues affecting the Aamjiwnaang people. After stepping down from his position on the Aamjiwnaang environmental committee, Plain took a job writing an environmental column for a local newspaper.
Plain remains in contact with environmentalists in Canada, Mexico and the United States. He hopes to compare environmental pollutants in different parts of North America to prove a hunch he has about the toxics in the Sarnia area. “I believe we are the most polluted area in North America and I think the data will back that up,” Plain says.
Most of all, Plain says, he is working on getting the word out about the connection between pollutants and health issues to others in the Aamjiwnaang nation. “Most people have no idea that there is a problem,” Plain says. “I’m trying to get information to them.”
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