Latest posts in Docs Talk
Standing on Guard
The evidence is mounting: industrial development of the tar sands is linked to the health of the people in Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan (Credit: Rainforest Action Network via Flickr).
I have vivid memories from my school years in Ireland of our geography teacher Mr. Crowe's stories about travelling across Canada. He always appeared to drift into some kind of rapture as he described the experience. His eyes revealed how much he enjoyed and missed the vastness of the Prairies with their rolling, wind-blown wheat fields that went on forever. His descriptions of the crystal-clear rivers, enormous forests, cloudless skies, and sweet air conjured up images that were as sharp as if it he'd had a projector in the classroom. He often referred to how clean the country was. Ireland in those days was not very clean. I vowed to some day confirm his claims in person. Not that I doubted Mr. Crowe. He seemed to be in touch with the world, our link to places we had only read about.
But since coming to Canada, I've seen a different picture — at least in Northern Alberta.
In my capacity as a family physician, I began making regular visits from Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan in the early 2000s. This First Nations community is situated in northeastern Alberta, on the northern shore of Lake Athabasca, an hour's flight north from Fort McMurray and downstream of the Athabasca tar sands.
In an idyllic setting, the 1,200 residents occupy the oldest settlement in Alberta, with "fly-in" (or "boat-in"!) access for 10 months of the year. The area is picturesque, on the edge of the Canadian Shield. About 80 per cent of the people rely…
Healthy hearts need clean air
Our health is affected when the air quality gets bad (Credit: Jenny Lee Silver via Flickr).
Have you ever heard of pollution killing someone? I saw this question posted in response to a blog denouncing "eco-condriacs". With June 2 being Clean Air Day, it's an appropriate question to consider.
It's often difficult to pinpoint direct proof of pollution's harmful effects on human health, except in cases of acute poisoning. The most famous and tragic example of acute pollution poisoning is the Great Smog of London in December 1952, which killed 3,000 people in one week. A total of 12,000 deaths were attributed to the smog over the course of the following year.
This event and many others prompted researchers to examine the health effects of air pollution at lower levels but over an extended period of time.
Burning fossil fuels (gasoline, kerosene, diesel, oil, coal) loads the air with pollutants, including "fine particulate matter", that we now know can affect cardiovascular health. Around the world, research teams have conducted experiments on isolated arterial cells, laboratory rats, healthy volunteers and cardiac patients. The data show that breathing tailpipe exhaust increases blood coagulation and causes oxidative stress of the arteries. It can lead to constriction of the arteries, reduced blood circulation in the vessels of the heart muscle, higher blood pressure, arrhythmias and thromboses. Several studies demonstrate…
Continue reading »The value of biodiversity and its impacts on human health
We share the Earth with more kinds of organisms today than ever before (Credit: Karim Rezk via Flickr).
May 22 is the International Day for Biological Diversity, marking the day on which the United Nations adopted the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992. In the past two decades, the scientific community's understanding of ecology — the study of how ecosystems work and where each biological component of a system fits into the greater whole — has exploded. With that knowledge has come two key realizations; firstly, that we are losing worldwide biological diversity (biodiversity) at an alarming and unprecedented rate, and secondly, for humans to thrive or even survive in the future, we must preserve as much biodiversity as possible so that we do not limit our future options.
The health of the natural world is often measured by examining the distribution and health of the many plants and animals who share this planet with us. This gives scientists a picture of the planet's biodiversity: the sum of variations of all life within a given ecosystem. Ecologists have shown that the healthier an ecosystem is, the more diversity it will contain. Heavily damaged or polluted ecosystems contain far fewer kinds of plants and animals than natural, undamaged systems of the same type. Thus, monitoring trends in biodiversity is like listening to the heartbeat of the planet.…
Continue reading »Environmental chemicals and cancer
A couple of years ago, I reviewed a landmark report on the connection between breast cancer and the environment. State of the Evidence 2008 made headlines with its conclusion that "a significant body of scientific evidence links exposures to radiation and synthetic chemicals to an increased risk of breast cancer."
On the whole, an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of cancers can be attributed to environmental factors. This takes into account physical (sunlight, x-rays, asbestos), biological (viruses, bacteria), and chemical agents in the environment that increase cancer risk. Of course, exposure to some of these agents is by choice, such as cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, and excessive sun exposure. What makes chemicals unique is that there's only so much we can do as individuals to reduce our exposure to chemicals in the environment.
Chemicals can linger in our environment and eventually make their way into our bodies. Without even knowing it, and despite our best efforts, we come in contact with these pollutants everyday — in our water, soil, air, food, and manufactured products. Many industrial contaminants can be measured in our tissues and blood. Traces of these chemicals have even been found in the blood of Inuit in northern Canada, although they live thousands of kilometers away from the original…
Continue reading »Is climate change getting you down?
A mosquito bloodfeeding (Credit: eyeweed via Flickr.)
Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes will like climate change. As things get warmer and weather patterns change, they will spread and take their biting, whining, malaria, dengue and yellow-fever-containing selves to new altitudes and territories. We will hate them more than ever before, and they will likely kill more of us than before. Oceans will rise, displacing populations, resulting in social disruption, lack of shelter, food, and sanitation services. Think of refugee camps now. You get the idea. With dwindling resources, people will get mad. And scared. They will fight. Fighting yields injury and anguish, and we will see those things too. Kids will wheeze from asthma and older people have heart attacks from the heat. There will be floods in some places and droughts in others. As summarized in a recent article in the medical journal, The Lancet, "The rich will be more uncomfortable...the poor will die." The authors went on to call climate change the biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century.
How does that make you feel?
If you are like most people, this is the kind of news that makes you want to cuddle your kids close, or escape to an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance", perhaps while opening…
Older posts »
- February 25, 2010
- Pesticides and your health — a family physician's perspective
- January 28, 2010
- Your environment, your health
