September 18, 2007
(en Français)
OTTAWA - Unlike nearly every other industrialized country, Canada has no coordinated environmental health strategy. As a result, Canada's current patchwork approach to the most serious environmental hazards threatens the health and well-being of every Canadian, according to a report from the David Suzuki Foundation.
"Environmental contaminants in our air, water and food are having an enormous negative effect on Canadians' health," says report author and environmental lawyer, David Boyd. Exposure to environmental contaminants is linked to asthma, poisonings, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, developmental disorders, birth defects, and reproductive problems.
"The good news is that we can prevent the majority of the adverse environmental effects on our health, but we require an all-encompassing effort from federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments to catch up and solve these problems," Mr. Boyd says.
Prescription for a Healthy Canada: Towards a National Environmental Health Strategy lays the framework for a national strategy to protect both the health of Canadians and Canada's extraordinary assets. As outlined in the report, the five priority areas of such a strategy would include:
- Improve research and monitoring;
- Strengthen laws, regulations and policies;
- Build professional capacity and raise public awareness;
- Confront the unjust distribution of environmental harms and protect vulnerable populations; and,
- Prioritize environmental health on the international stage.
Currently, many Canadian health and environment laws and policies are weaker than corresponding laws in other nations. For example:
- Canada does not have legally binding national standards for air quality and drinking water quality;
- Canada permits the use of pesticides that other countries have banned for health and environmental reasons;
- Compared to other nations, Canada allows higher levels of pesticide residues on our food;
- Canada has completely failed to regulate some toxic substances such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), phthalates, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs); and,
- Canada has weaker regulations for toxic substances such as radon, lead, mercury, arsenic, and asbestos.
"The kind of strategy we're proposing is not only needed, it can work," says Mr. Boyd.
Strong regulatory action can produce swift results. Sweden banned PBDEs, a toxic group of industrial chemicals widely used as flame-retardants, after Swedish scientists discovered that concentrations of the toxin in women's breast milk were doubling every five years. Subsequently, there was a rapid decline in the concentration of PBDEs in the breast milk of Swedish women, and no noticeable negative economic impacts on Swedish society.
"A well-designed and well-executed national environmental health strategy will not only save thousands of lives and prevent millions of illnesses, but also strengthen Canada's economy and improve the quality of life for all Canadians," says Lisa Gue, the Foundation's environmental health policy analyst.
Health Canada estimated that the direct health care costs and lost productivity caused by environmental factors add up to between $46 billion and $52 billion a year.
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The full report, Prescription for a Healthy Canada: Towards a National Environmental Health Strategy, can be found online at:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Publications/Prescription_For_A_Healthy_Canada.aspFor more information contact:
Jason Curran
Communications Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
Cell: (604) 961-9591
jcurran@davidsuzuki.org
