The area round Sarnia, Ontario, has about 20% of Canada's refineries, hosts Canada's largest hazardous waste dump, produces about 40% of the country's petrochemicals and, according to federal toxic-release statistics, has some of the country's highest discharges of dangerous chemicals into the environment.

Its industries have also been huge users and producers of asbestos. Although asbestos has been tightly controlled since the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the material wsas once used indiscriminately as an insulating wrap for pipes and reactor vessels in petrochemical plants. The dangers of asbestos were becoming known in the 1930s and 1940s, but little was done to control exposures until the 1970s.

Jim Brophy, who runs the local occupational-disease clinic in Sarnia, has seen close to 3000 industrial workers complaining of a horrifying array of illnesses — mesotheliomas (normally a very rare cancer in the lining of the chest wall, but not rare in Sarnia), leukemias, lung cancers, breast cancers and gastrointestinal cancers.

The tragedy is that toxic exposures, both occupational and environmental, were tolerated for decades. The industrial cancers are family affairs, affecting not only the industrial workers themselves but their families. For example, asbestos dust was brought into homes on clothing, and then inhaled or absorbed through the skin of the workers' families.

Mr. Brophy says that the "regulatory system and the government just totally failed to protect the workers", and although the asbestos era is winding down, Sarnia industries have had a long history of major toxic spills, and he fears the releases will leave a legacy of health problems.
(Globe & Mail, Saturday March 13, 2003)

The province of Manitoba filed suit in North Dakota on March 29th in a bid to halt a water diversion project that it worries will pollute the Red River system. Water Stewardship Minister Steve Ashton said his province joined forces with a small group of ranchers and landowners in North Dakota in this effort because the federal governments of Canada and the U.S. refuse to take the matter to an international commission that oversees water disputes.

Ashton said the Devil's Lake project, a state initiative to ease chronic flooding, would bring high levels of mercury, phosphorus and foreign fish species into Manitoba, polluting the water and affecting fish and plant life. Ashton is concerned about North Dakota's plan to build the diversion first and then assess the environmental impact once it's in operation next year.
(The Montreal Gazette, March 30, 2004)