For 15 years and counting, my commute from Mississauga to Toronto has been mired by everything imaginable — construction, cancelled buses, traffic jams, frozen tracks and train delays with no explanation at all. It’s likely about to get worse, or at least more crowded. 

There are more than 60,000 public servants working in the Ontario government. Starting next week, they’ll head back to the office five days a week, even as provincial politicians take an extended break from the legislature until March. 

The province issued that directive last August, changing the pandemic-era policy that first ordered everyone to work from home, then continued to allow for flexible work schedules. The directive was a far cry from Premier Ford’s thinking only five years ago, when he said working from home was “the way of the future.” 

On social media, people who said they were public servants were upset at the change. 

“Hope every single driver knows that I am clogging up traffic unnecessarily because of Ford,” said one person on Reddit. 

“I am reminded I am now paid not to be at my most productive. But instead, it is now also my job to use more gas, contribute to ridiculously congested traffic and emit more pollution,” said another on the same platform. 

The greatest concentration of provincial government offices is in Toronto, including the legislature. But not all government workers live in the city, so bringing them all back five days a week is going to strain southern Ontario’s already stressed and overpacked roads and transit system — and its air.

Transportation is already the single greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario, a province where the quality and quantity of transit leaves much to be desired. As provincial workers join the employees of big banks and other companies that have ordered everyone back downtown, there will inevitably be more people in cars, increasing traffic pollution. 

It already happened in Ottawa when federal workers returned to the office for just three days a week in 2024. A Carleton University study, conducted on 1,500 federal bureaucrats, found remote workers produced a quarter less emissions than those who went into the office. The researchers found the difference was even more drastic in Quebec, where remote workers with the federal government produced 64 per cent less emissions. 

The report’s conclusion was that working from home — even just part of the time — does cut emissions, as well as easing congestion. 

The Ford government wants to expand highways and roads, but more lanes simply means more cars on the road — a concept known as induced demand. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

This would all look a lot different if our transportation infrastructure could handle tens of thousands more people. But it can’t, and little has changed in that regard over the Ford government’s seven and a half years in power, for either drivers or transit users. 

The long-promised Highway 413, which would cut through the Greenbelt and connect the suburbs north and west of Toronto, and the Bradford Bypass farther north, have yet to be built, even though the government has passed legislation after legislation to enable construction. 

And even if they were built, they almost certainly wouldn’t ease traffic congestion — even the province’s own modelling says so. 

Research shows more highways don’t fix traffic congestion. So why is Ontario still building them?

More lanes simply means more cars on the road — a concept known as induced demand that is best illustrated by the fact that when the Ford government lifted provincial tolls off sections of the usually quiet Highway 407 last June, those stretches soon became busy. Meanwhile, there’s still no shortage of traffic on the 401.

But lifting those tolls was moving in the opposite direction of a proven solution for crowded streets: charging drivers through tolls and congestion pricing has worked in New York, reducing traffic congestion by 11 per cent since 2024. Instead, Ontario has killed several tolls and outlawed congestion pricing in its most recent budget. 

Even though the Ford government says it’s investing in “the largest transit expansion in North America,” buses, subways and light-rail transit continue to be overpacked and limited for people commuting across the Greater Toronto Area. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

Transit-wise, if you’ve taken a GO train or TTC streetcar at rush hour you know there’s often no room for even one more person to make their way back to the office in January. 

The government says it’s investing in “the largest transit expansion in North America” and the “largest subway expansion in Canadian history.” Cool, but how long is it going to take? 

Toronto and its neighbouring communities remain trapped in decades-long construction mazes for light-rail transit and subways whose end dates are aspirational at best, as is their effectiveness. The city’s newest line since 2002 is Finch West, a $3.7-billion, 10.3 kilometre light-rail transitway that runners can outpace, as several people have demonstrated. 

If nothing else, maybe Ontario’s lagging transit upgrades and lack of real solutions for congestion will make walking to work the commute of choice — even if it means marathon distances. Otherwise, and more likely, we’ll continue down this road, which may involve paying another $120 billion in health costs associated with air pollution across the country, particularly in the most densely populated regions like the Greater Toronto Area. And more air pollution means more global warming and more extreme weather events like flooding and wildfires. 

But that shouldn’t be the cost of going to work — nor should the void of human interaction from working at home be a better solution.

Here’s to hoping the ever-elusive Goldilocks option of better transit and less traffic is on the table one day, for public servants and the rest of us.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Growing up in Alberta, Julia Sawatzky heard talk of the oilsands her entire life. But she hadn’t actually traveled much farther north than Edmonton before she went to Fort McMurray to complete a month-long residency as part of her physician training in March.

The 30-year-old, who is specializing in emergency medicine, wants to address the health impacts of environmental issues and climate change. She saw the heart of oilsands country as the perfect place to see how those forces are converging close to home. 

“I was starting to have this reckoning as I learned more about the impacts of climate change in Alberta and in Canada,” she said. “I was interested to figure out ways that, as a doctor, I could help contribute to solutions to serving communities that are impacted.”

When she got there, Sawatzky was surprised to learn the only emergency room serving nearly 70,000 people had no resident emergency doctors. Patients were treated by doctors living in places like Edmonton, Vancouver Island and as far as Ontario, who flew in for lucrative work, Sawatzky said, then headed home again. 

During her time in Fort McMurray’s emergency room, Sawatzky was also surprised by the number of cases of asthma she was seeing in young, otherwise healthy patients. She suspected a relationship with the oilsands and other industry in the region. However, research doesn’t exist to definitively prove a connection.

Julia Sawatzky says doctors who live where they practise have a “deeper understanding” of their community’s needs. But her worries about the health risks posed by the fossil fuel industry make her unsure about settling in northern Alberta. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

She looked into health data collected by the province. The most current community health profile for the municipality of Wood Buffalo, where the Athabasca oilsands are located, shows emergency room visits for asthma are nearly double the rest of the province. Emergency room visits for chronic bronchitis and emphysema are four times higher in Wood Buffalo than the rest of Alberta. In Fort McMurray, emergency room visits for asthma are 40 per cent higher than the rest of the province and nearly twice the provincial average for chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

Sawatzky is concerned that fossil fuel extraction is playing a role in an increased risk of respiratory diseases. Asthma has long been linked to air pollution and a peer-reviewed Canadian study, published in early 2025, documented the increased risk of respiratory illnesses among Albertans living close to oil and gas activity. 

“Oil and gas activities in Alberta are associated with negative impacts on human health,” the researchers wrote, adding, on average, their results indicated a nine to 21 per cent increase in the odds of cardiovascular and respiratory illness for people in closer proximity. 

The study didn’t focus on the oilsands, but for Sawatzky, the area’s increased emergency room visits for asthma speak for themselves.

The fight for life downstream of Alberta’s tailings ponds — full of arsenic, mercury and lead

As she weighed the risks — and the unknowns — Sawatzky began to form a theory of why many of her colleagues chose not to put down roots in the region, and to reconsider living there herself.

Yet the idea of being a non-resident doctor makes her uncomfortable. Living where they work “can allow doctors to have a deeper understanding of the local health context: health determinants, health-care needs and broader community resources,” she said. “The ability of doctors to move around and the fact that after I graduate residency, I’ll probably have a lot of choice, really underscores my privilege,” Sawatzky said. But she still wonders whether the four-and-a-half-hour drive from Edmonton might be a better choice for her if she decides to work in Fort McMurray after completing her training. 

Sawatzky is not alone. In environmental hotspots across the country and around the world — where health outcomes can be affected by pollution or extreme weather — some highly sought-after and mobile doctors are quietly leaving to safeguard their quality of life. Across the country, people struggle to access family doctors and, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, only seven per cent of Canadian doctors work in rural areas, such as the oilsands region. The problem is driven by a multitude of complex factors, including doctors’ concerns about environmental risks, according to experts interviewed by The Narwhal.

Uche Ralph-Opara, the chief health officer at global health non-profit Project HOPE, co-authored a recent report examining how extreme weather, such as floods and wildfires, has disrupted care delivery. A physician herself, she is starting to see health workers weigh climate risk alongside compensation and infrastructure when deciding where to live and practise. “Across the different regions where we work, you know, we’re finding some doctors avoiding placements,” she said.

A tailings ponds near Fort McMurray, Alta., where emergency room visits for asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema are higher than in the rest of the province. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The connection between access to care and environmental factors is an emerging area of research. A 2021 study published in The Lancet surveying doctors in Australia’s Northern Territory, a region facing extreme heat, storms and water insecurity, found 34 per cent of respondents said climate change is either already causing, or likely to cause, them to consider leaving the area.

But it’s a subject that’s difficult to quantify in Canada, both because of a lack of data and because many of those closest to the issue are reluctant to speak out. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said some doctors are worried about professional repercussions after witnessing the treatment of medical whistleblowers, while others worry about jeopardizing future care for the patients they left behind by drawing attention to the environmental risks of serving these high-need communities.

The Narwhal reached out to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents companies that develop and produce oil and natural gas in Canada, to ask about concerns that its members’ operations pose health risks to nearby communities and may be contributing to the ability to recruit doctors. The association did not respond.

The Narwhal also asked Alberta’s Ministry of Health and Alberta Health Services to verify Sawatzky’s observations about respiratory illnesses and fly-in doctors in Fort McMurray multiple times over nearly six months and never received a response.

Doctors’ association says health risks of LNG are contributing to shortage

The issue is not isolated to the Alberta oilsands. In the past few years, at least seven doctors have left Dawson Creek, B.C., over concerns about the health impacts of the liquefied natural gas industry, according to the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Their departure left the town without half of the doctors required to fully staff the hospital’s emergency department, the doctors’ association said in August 2024. Access to primary care in Dawson Creek lags behind the provincial average, with 61.5 per cent of residents attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner, compared to 76 per cent elsewhere in B.C.

Stephen Ashwell left in 2014. The physician’s reasons were two-fold: one, his aging parents needed more help and two, the town he once loved had been transformed by the rise of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. 

The region is home to one of the country’s most substantial gas deposits. The industry has been a huge economic driver in the area, but it’s come at a cost, Ashwell said. “It was just kind of progressive degradation of the environment and the town the whole time I was there. It became a less attractive place to live.”

Ashwell came to work in the town in 1987, drawn in by the rural lifestyle. For 25 years he worked as a general practitioner, doing everything from obstetrics to emergency medicine. By the end of his tenure he was focused on oncology and palliative care. 

During his tenure there, a lack of data meant he couldn’t say whether the cancer cases he saw were statistically unusual. But Ashwell said he wouldn’t be surprised to see cancer rates rise over time. “These things often take many years to unpick and to reveal themselves,” he said. “We know there are carcinogenic hydrocarbons being released. Eventually, that’s going to bite you.”

His biggest concern for his patients was prenatal exposure to low doses of toxins from the oil and gas industry. In the years since he left, his concerns have been bolstered by research.

In a 2018 pilot study led by the school of public health at the Université de Montréal, elevated levels of benzene metabolites were found in the urine of 29 pregnant women in British Columbia’s Peace River region. While noting the small sample size and the need for more thorough monitoring, the researchers reported a byproduct of benzene was 3.5 times higher in women in the area than the national average. That figure was six times higher in Indigenous women. 

A 2022 study out of the University of Alberta showed that communities living near fracking operations have experienced higher rates of adverse birth outcomes. And in 2024, a team of doctors and researchers in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and the U.S. reviewed more than 50 studies — including two from Canada — on fracking and health, which also pointed to an increase in adverse birth outcomes, as well as respiratory diseases. 

A flare from a liquefied natural gas facility in Kitimat, B.C. Doctors say the explosion of the industry in the province makes them worried about health risks for both their patients and themselves. Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal

Ashwell relocated to Victoria. “I feel it’s safer from an environmental standpoint. I feel that I’m less likely to be exposed to environmental toxins here than in Dawson Creek,” he said.

Environmental health concerns aren’t the only reason Dawson Creek has a hard time keeping doctors, physician Ulrike Meyer said. She moved to the Peace Region in the 1980s and has seen other doctors come and go for decades. “It’s not an easy sell to attract somebody in the northeast or in rural practice, any rural community will tell you that,” she said.

Meyer’s colleagues are often foreign-trained doctors who must spend a certain number of years in underserved areas to get licensed in Canada. But many don’t stay, telling her larger centres offer better schools and job opportunities for their families. Often, they leave to join family living in other parts of the country.

The region’s natural beauty is one reason Meyer chose Dawson Creek as her home. She remembers buying a pair of sunglasses soon after arriving — having grown up in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, where thick industrial smog obscured the sunshine, pristine northeastern British Columbia felt dazzling in contrast. Over the past 33 years, she has worked as a rural family doctor while raising three children with her late husband, a farmer. 

“I love this area, it’s home for me,” Meyer said.

Her appointments often involve taking environmental histories of her patients, asking if they work for the LNG industry or how close they live to compressor stations, which pressurize gas to move it along pipelines, or flare stacks, used to burn off excess flammable gas. Some of their homes are surrounded by industrial infrastructure. 

Stories etched in her memory include the woman from a decade ago who had tingling in her lower legs and lived next to a compressor station and a body of wastewater she described as being on fire 24/7. A young industry firefighter with unexplainable neurological symptoms told her they mostly resolved when he left town. Another patient who worked his whole career in oil and gas, dealing with toxic substances, told her he believed work was the reason he was dying of cancer. 

Her own stories add to those shared by colleagues, including the seven doctors who left in recent years, all of whom she knew. Meyer suspects some of the health issues she has seen in her practice have resulted from exposure to contaminants, but an absence of rigorous population-level studies makes this hard to prove. 

While the town of Dawson Creek attracts people because of its surrounding natural beauty, the area is a centre for oil and gas activity, which physicians like Ulrike Meyer believe has had negative health impacts on residents. Seven doctors have left the town in recent years, leading to a shortage of emergency room staff and family practitioners. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Dawson Creek belongs to the Northern Health authority, which released a regional cancer report earlier this year. It found that while residents generally experienced stable or slightly increased rates of new cancers between 2011 and 2021, rates of lung cancer exceeded the province-wide rate. Northern Health also consistently had a higher rate of cancer-related deaths, specifically for kidney, colon, lung, prostate, head and neck and invasive bladder cancer.

While studies showing a direct link between fracking and specific health outcomes are lacking in Canada, studies from other countries have shown living near LNG and hydraulic fracturing operations is associated with increased risks of respiratory, skin, reproductive and possibly carcinogenic health effects. 

The Narwhal reached out to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to ask about B.C. Peace River region doctors’ worries that their patients’ illnesses were linked to the liquefied natural gas industry. The association did not respond. 

“The very industry that’s leading to some of these health harms is also exacerbating a crisis in access to health care,” Melissa Lem said in an interview. A family physician and past president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Lem interviewed three of the doctors who left Dawson Creek. They cited diagnoses of rare tumours and deadly cancers in their own patients, colleagues, friends and family members, as well as the quality of their children’s education, as their primary reasons for leaving, she said.

Despite “their concerns about the health of their families,” none were willing to speak publicly, Lem said. Some told her they still work remotely with the community and don’t want to jeopardize those relationships.

Others told Lem they got pushback for voicing their concerns. It’s a worry John O’Connor can relate to. 

In the early 2000s, the former northern Alberta physician began to call attention to what he considered above-average cancer rates and other health concerns in Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan, Alta., an oilsands region home to Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Métis. O’Connor believed high rates of respiratory illness, inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune diseases across the region could be attributed to industrial pollution.

A life — and death — in Fort Chipewyan, downstream from the oilsands

His advocacy was met with intense criticism, including complaints to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, which investigated O’Connor for raising undue alarm. While he was eventually cleared of the allegations, the backlash was so intense that Lem said it sent a clear message to other doctors — speaking out about environmental health risks can come at a personal and professional cost.

“Nothing will change unless more physicians speak up about what they’re seeing,” said Lem. 

Despite her deep relationship with the community, Meyer is contemplating leaving. “It’s hard because you know logically you should not live here, probably, or you might take a toll for your health,” she said. If she leaves, it will make the town’s care gap even more acute. 

In Ontario’s Chemical Valley, doctor shortages and concerning health impacts have both lasted for years

In southwestern Ontario, the area of industrial activity spreading out from Sarnia is known as Chemical Valley, and has some of the worst air quality in the country. Concerted efforts over the past decade have improved the situation somewhat, but studies from the Ontario government and others have found increased risks of cancer, particularly leukemia, due to air pollutants such as benzene. A 2021 study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario also found children in the Lambton region, which includes Sarnia, were more likely to develop asthma than children in the nearby Ontario regions of London-Middlesex or Windsor. 

Last year, Aamjiwnaang First Nation, which is located near petroleum and petrochemical plants in the Sarnia region, declared a state of emergency after a month of elevated benzene emissions caused headaches and nausea in the community. In February this year, the First Nation and the federal government signed on to a pilot project to address the impacts of industry — a move that came after the nation sounded the alarm for decades.

How Ontario could have cracked down on Chemical Valley pollution — but chose not to

In July this year, Western University medical student Allison Pert completed a four-week rural medicine rotation focused on Indigenous health in the region. Two weeks were spent in the Sarnia area, including seeing patients at Aamjiwnaang First Nation alongside health practitioners. 

“People seem well aware of the potential health risks associated with living in such close proximity to, you know, this expansive chemical industrial area,” she said. Patients told her anecdotes about adverse health effects — fertility and respiratory issues — that they attributed to pollution. 

Like other parts of Ontario, the region struggles to fill family practice vacancies. INSPIRE-PHC, a network of primary care researchers and stakeholders in Ontario, found that more than 10,000 patients in Sarnia had no regular primary care provider in the city in 2022, up from 8,200 in 2020 and more than in similar-sized cities such as Belleville and Welland. Since December 2024, Sarnia’s Bluewater Health hospital has shut down urgent and emergency general surgery services three times due to a surgeon shortage.

Aamjiwnaang First Nation outside of Sarnia, Ont., is right beside an area known as Chemical Valley, where petroleum and petrochemical plants have long been allowed to emit high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

The intensity of industry in the region dates back over a century, and concerns about health care access aren’t new either. In 2011, Tor Oiamo, an associate professor in the department of geography and environmental studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, led a study that showed people living in areas with high air pollution in Sarnia had less access to primary care than other residents.

“The results were pretty striking,” he said, noting that in general, economic marginalization is associated with lower health care access and utilization, and lower income neighbourhoods commonly experience higher levels of air pollution.

This confluence of factors can have serious outcomes. Air pollution is associated with an earlier chance of dying as well as stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and pneumonia. A well-trained doctor can make this linkage and plan interventions, Oiamo said — that is, if a doctor is available. 

Pert expects to graduate in 2029 and is already weighing the risks of where to practise. 

“I’m someone who loves rural practice, and I’m passionate about Indigenous health, and I went into medicine really to remediate these exact needs that we’re talking about, but it is a dilemma,” she said. “If I choose to live in these communities, what am I sacrificing?” 

Worries about the health risks of climate change could add to Canada’s doctor shortage pressures

Along with the risks of pollution, major weather events linked to climate change are impacting the global and Canadian health-care workforce. When a 2017 fire in 100 Mile House, B.C., destroyed the home of a couple of near-retirement doctors, they chose not to rebuild. The rural community temporarily lost oncology, obstetrics and anesthesia services.

Evidence from around the world shows extreme heat, wildfires and floods can drive doctors away, Ralph-Opara of Project HOPE said. A 2020 World Health Organization report on workforce planning advises governments to consider and address the effects of climate change on staffing, warning that populations with climate-related health issues are increasingly vulnerable to health-care shortages . 

“When we talk about climate change, our focus is often around infrastructure and health impact, but we’re not talking enough about the human toll it’s taken on the people actually delivering care,” Ralph-Opara said, adding that climate stressors are exacerbating burnout, anxiety and mental health impacts for health providers. 

While Canadian data exists on physician supply and some environmental health risks, no government agency appears to be formally considering connections. Health Canada said it has not investigated potential links, though it does have programs to support expanding access to family health services in rural and remote areas. 

The Narwhal sent questions to the health ministries in Canada’s four largest provinces, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Alberta and Ontario did not respond. Neither British Columbia nor Quebec had specific plans to make sure environmentally risky areas are adequately staffed. 

A new generation of doctors, like Julia Sawatzky, are weighing more than just financial compensation when determining where to settle and practise. Their own health and the risks posed by environmental contaminants are a deciding factor for some. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The British Columbia Ministry of Health sent an email statement saying it does not formally track if environmental factors are impacting recruitment, but does “recognize that climate change is reshaping health risks in B.C.” The department said it is training health workers on addressing how climate change might be affecting their mental health and improving occupational health and safety for workers affected by climate risks.

In Quebec, the Ministry of Health and Social Services said it hopes to have a plan to adapt its public health response to the changing climate by 2027. The plan will be informed by regional health assessments and the knowledge that climate change has a “disproportionate impact on disadvantaged subgroups of the population or those with fewer resources to adapt,” a media spokesperson said.

In Alberta, Fort McMurray still struggles to recruit, which the province is trying to address with financial incentives for doctors living in rural, remote and northern communities. But northern incentive programs in that province and others that have them, like Ontario, are designed to compensate health-care workers for moving to remote locations, not taking on environmental or climate risk. 

Meanwhile, Pert, Sawatzky and a new generation of doctors are weighing more than pay cheques. They are taking into account their own health risks, too. And they know this comes at a cost to the community.

“A lot of community members and patients don’t have the option to decide not to live near places where the environment is being destroyed,” Sawatzky said. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

There’s something in the air in Aamjiwnaang First Nation. The community is located next to an industrial area of Sarnia, Ont., known to many as Chemical Valley. There are dozens of factories and refineries here, accounting for 40 per cent of Canada’s chemical industry — and an enormous amount of air pollution.

That pollution comes in many forms, but the levels of one chemical in particular caused Aamjiwnaang to declare a state of emergency last spring. Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining, used to make Styrofoam and other plastic materials. It’s also a volatile organic compound — a category of chemicals that evaporate easily into the air. Inhaling very high amounts can make you very sick, very quickly. And constantly breathing benzene-laden air, even in very small amounts, can do a lot of damage, too — notably by increasing your risk of leukemia and other cancers. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry set emissions benchmarks much higher than those that triggered the state of emergency, which remains active to this day. A recent investigation by The Narwhal showed the province knew about the health risks this posed to the Aamjiwnaang community, and failed for years to take action that would meaningfully control benzene exposure. 

An air monitor is set up outside the Aamjiwnaang First Nation band office, and in front of INEOS Styrolution’s now-shuttered plant. Through the process of closing the plant, there have been several spikes in benzene emissions levels, which the company has notified the community about. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

It wasn’t until after the state of emergency was declared that the ministry introduced stricter regulations aimed at controlling emissions from INEOS Styrolution, the chemical plant located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and the primary source of benzene emissions in the area. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry didn’t answer detailed questions related to these findings. INEOS Styrolution said it “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the ministry. The company halted operations last spring and went on to decommission the facility, but said the closure was not related to the benzene spikes.

How much benzene in the air is too much? And what does that actually look like? Here’s a graphic, numerical look at the story of benzene pollution in Aamjiwnaang. Each represents concentrations of the chemical, averaged over different periods of time, and are expressed in micrograms per cubic metre of air. 

This series of graphics demonstrates the large discrepancy between the levels known to cause measurable health impacts, the levels that residents say caused serious symptoms of illness and the levels the Ontario government used to assess whether the company was doing enough to control its emissions.

Benzene levels, averaged over a single hour

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

191 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This was the maximum hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. The community has recorded even higher hourly concentrations; in 2023, the maximum hourly level recorded was 372 micrograms per cubic metre. The First Nation now uses a benchmark of 27 micrograms per cubic metre to trigger the closure of some facilities.

580 micrograms per cubic metre, right: Ontario also gave this number to INEOS in 2019 as a benchmark to assess the risk of short-term health impacts. It’s based on standards from Texas that have been criticized as too lenient and allowing unacceptable increases in the risk of cancer. It is also several times higher than the levels in Aamjiwnaang when several people went to the hospital with headaches and nausea.

Benzene levels, averaged over a 24-hour period

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

2.3 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is the level the Ontario government says could indicate a higher cancer risk with long-term exposure.

50 micrograms per cubic metre, centre: This was the average concentration level recorded by an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 16, 2024. Around the same time, people in the community reported headaches and nausea, strong enough to send some to the hospital.

320 micrograms per cubic metre, right: This is the level the Ontario government said, in 2019, it would use to evaluate the risk of acute exposure from emissions from INEOS Styrolution, located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, playground and sports fields.

Benzene levels, averaged over a full year

Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

0.45 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is Ontario’s legal air quality limit for benzene. It is based on health studies that say this concentration, over a lifetime, presents a non-negligible increase in the risk of cancer. This isn’t enforced across the board; facilities that can’t meet it, including INEOS in Sarnia, are required to report emissions to the government and bring exposure down to a level that is “as low as reasonably achievable.”

4.5 micrograms per cubic metre, right: In 2019, the Ontario government told INEOS it should aim to gradually reduce its benzene emissions to this level to reduce the cancer risk to people nearby. It’s also the level established as a regulatory limit in June 2024. Annual recorded concentrations of benzene in Aamjiwnaang, measured at the band office monitoring station, were about 6.5 micrograms per cubic metre in 2019 and in 2023. That’s about ten times as much as industrial areas in Michigan and California, included for comparison in a 2024 health report.

— With files from Emma McIntosh

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Last spring, Aamjiwnaang First Nation hit a breaking point.

For weeks, enormous amounts of benzene had been leaking from a plastics plant across the road from the southwestern Ontario community’s band office. Long-term exposure to low levels of benzene causes cancers like leukemia. If you breathe in a lot of it at once, the carcinogen can also make you feel very sick, very quickly — and people in Aamjiwnaang were breathing in levels of benzene hundreds of times higher than what health-based guidelines recommend. 

Sore throats, nausea, dizziness and headaches struck members of the Anishinaabe community, located alongside a cluster of petroleum and petrochemical plants in an area of Sarnia, Ont., known as Chemical Valley. A few wound up in the emergency room due to “noxious exposure,” the local hospital said at the time. The nation sent staff home from the band office and warned families to stay away from a playground. On April 25, 2024, the nation triggered a state of emergency, a watershed moment that made headlines across the country.

Daily averages of benzene exposure: Left: 2.3 micrograms per cubic metre is Ontario’s recommended limit for daily benzene exposure. The recommendation was designed to minimize cancer risk, but is not legally binding. Centre: 50 micrograms per cubic metre was the daily reading in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on April 16, 2024, when people in the community reported headaches and nausea. Right: 320 micrograms per cubic metre was the level Ontario told INEOS, in 2019, it would use to assess the risk of acute health problems from the company’s benzene emissions. It’s based on standards from Texas that have been criticized for leaving residents at high risk of cancer. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

The Ontario government imposed new limits on the plastics plant owner, INEOS Styrolution, days later — but years after provincial officials identified the problem. Ontario’s Environment Ministry had known since at least 2019 that INEOS was emitting similar amounts of benzene regularly and failed to stop it, documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information show. The company said it has always remained within its legal limits for emissions. The documents show the province knew the threshold for benzene posed a significant health risk to Aamjiwnaang First Nation long before imposing the new limits.

The Ontario government’s delayed action is one example of a pattern laid out in more than 250 pages of records obtained by The Narwhal, all dated from fall 2023 but detailing events that happened years earlier. In 2022 and 2023 alone, the Environment Ministry documented at least six incidents where the company leaked enough benzene to risk acute health problems for people nearby, according to the documents. That included two incidents where levels of the chemical were higher than what triggered the 2024 state of emergency — when the province took stricter steps to curb emissions.

Beyond that, the documents show government officials realized INEOS and other facilities were emitting more benzene than the Environment Ministry was originally aware of, in large part due to leaks from storage tanks. Despite this, officials still declined to take steps to limit them. Altogether, it paints a hazy picture of how industry is regulated in Chemical Valley, and just how bad the air really is.

A state of emergency in Ontario’s Chemical Valley

It’s an issue Aamjiwnaang First Nation has been raising red flags about for years — and increasingly taking into its own hands, establishing air pollution standards, increasing its oversight of the maze of pipelines that cross the reserve and working with the federal government on a pilot project addressing environmental racism. 

“We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin said in an interview. “We need to be there as well.”

On June 13, Aamjiwnaang’s band council again recommended certain areas of the community be evacuated due to high benzene levels from the INEOS plant — though the levels were still legal under provincial guidelines. In a letter to several federal and provincial ministers and mayors, the band council wrote the community’s annual powwow was scheduled for the June 21 weekend, coinciding with National Indigenous Peoples Day. The event already saw lower than usual attendance last year “due to fear in the community over benzene exposure and potential health impacts.”

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin signed the terms of reference for addressing environmental racism in her community alongside the federal government this year. Aamjiwnaang was the first community to do so under Bill C-226, the National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer detailed questions from The Narwhal about the documents and how it regulates air pollution in Chemical Valley. The Narwhal also sent detailed questions to INEOS Styrolution. The company did not answer most of them, but sent a statement saying it prioritizes safety and has “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the Environment Ministry.

“INEOS Styrolution remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting the health and safety of our employees and the community, and we have consistently adhered to [the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks’] emissions requirements,” spokesperson April Ludwikowski wrote.

Benzene emissions in Chemical Valley higher than reported estimates 

Aamjiwnaang is located on the St. Clair River, just south of Lake Huron. The nation’s name means “at the spawning stream” in Anishinaabemowin. Today, about 900 people live on its reserve, where cul-de-sacs are lined with brick houses and a creek trickles past the nation’s community centre. 

Every year, as spring turns to summer, more than 10,000 sturgeon — a species that’s endangered on the Great Lakes — return to the river to spawn, many of them meeting below the Bluewater Bridge, which connects Sarnia to Michigan. When The Narwhal visited in February, a kingfisher dove to scoop fish from the icy waters while an eagle soared overhead. 

Still, Chemical Valley is nearly always visible over the tops of trees and fences, its stacks and tanks a reminder of the heavy industry a stone’s throw away. The Sarnia area’s history with petroleum and petrochemicals stretches back to the mid-1800s, when the first oil well in North America was drilled nearby, in a village now named Oil Springs. Refineries soon followed. During the Second World War, Sarnia produced synthetic rubber for the Allied forces. Even more companies followed after the war ended, and Chemical Valley now hosts about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s band office is directly across the road from INEOS Styrolution, which has long been allowed by the province to emit high levels of benzene, resulting in the office being temporarily closed and staff sent home feeling ill.

As workers flooded the area in the 1940s, a village called Blue Water sprang up outside the gate of the first plant in Chemical Valley. Governments ended up relocating residents away from it two decades later, concerned about how living there could impact their health. Aamjiwnaang’s baseball diamond is located about 800 metres from the plaque that now commemorates the old village site. The nation is still surrounded by industry.

INEOS is among the closest plants to the reserve, directly across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office and that same baseball diamond. The plant has been shut down since regulators stepped in last spring, and INEOS has announced plans to decommission it by the end of 2025. But for years it was a “heavy benzene emitter,” according to internal Environment Ministry documents — releasing “significantly more” than other facilities in Chemical Valley.

Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining that’s also found in crude oil and fuel. It’s one of the foundational ingredients in plastic that, along with other chemicals, can be used to make anything from food containers to car parts. At its Sarnia facility, INEOS Styrolution used benzene to make plastic and rubber. It stored the benzene — which regularly came from refineries in the area — in massive tanks that were known to leak, according to the documents. 

Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to way more of the chemical than people living in big cities and other industrial areas: 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, according to the First Nation, and 10 times more than a city in California that has a similar mix of plants. 

The flags of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Anishinabek fly over the community at the shore of the St. Clair River.

“Ontario’s air pollution requirements to limit industrial pollution are lagging requirements in the U.S.,” said a briefing prepared for then-environment minister Andrea Khanjin in late 2023, noting the elevated levels of benzene and other pollutants near Aamjiwnaang.

“In many cases, Ontario’s facilities emit far more than comparable U.S. facilities.” 

Aside from the long-term cancer risk that comes from breathing in small amounts of benzene, exposure to a lot of it at once can cause headaches, tremors and dizziness. 

One set of provincial guidelines that consider cumulative sources of air pollutants, but aren’t legally binding, recommends benzene levels stay below a daily average of 2.3 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 16, 2024, during the event that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang, the daily average was 50 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 25, the hourly reading at a community air monitor reached 191 micrograms per cubic metre.

Ontario’s air quality regulation, which considered the long-term cancer risks posed by benzene, mandates average concentrations of the chemical be no higher than 0.45 micrograms per cubic metre annually. But the air quality regulation does not apply to some of the companies operating in Chemical Valley.

INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia plant, along with six other facilities in the area, are exempt from provincial benzene emissions guidelines because it wouldn’t be “technically and economically feasible” to meet them, according to the Ontario government. Instead, the seven facilities follow a set of rules called “technical standards,” which are also common in other types of industrial sites, like pulp and paper mills and asphalt plants. The provincial Liberal government of the day created the standards covering petrochemical plants and petroleum refineries in Sarnia in 2016 after industry there pushed back on the province’s air quality standard for benzene, then a brand-new policy.

Just beyond Aamjiwnaang First Nation is the Suncor Sarnia Refinery, top left, which produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, among others. Throughout the community, areas are blocked off, right of ways cleared and markers stand up to note the location of pipelines underground.

Technical standards don’t put a hard limit on benzene emissions. The ministry instead requires companies to use the best available equipment to lower emissions as much as possible. To get there, the standards have requirements around emissions-reduction technology and air monitoring, among other things, and the Ministry of Environment can order more measures if it believes they’re needed. 

The technical standards affecting Chemical Valley were written based on an assessment of benzene sources in Sarnia. They used air monitoring and a review of how much several facilities were emitting at the time, the ministry said in 2016. 

Some of the estimates the ministry relied on were provided by industry — and in at least one case, they were wrong, according to a briefing note prepared for Khanjin in late 2023. The memo points to one company as an example: INEOS Styrolution, which it said was emitting maximum concentrations of benzene 15 times higher than what the province was aware of. 

The documents do not detail how the error happened, which other companies may have also submitted incorrect estimates or when the Ontario government realized its gauge of benzene emissions was wrong.

The Narwhal sent questions about the problem, including direct quotes from the documents, to every company in the Sarnia area that operates under a petrochemical or petroleum industry technical standard, a list that also includes Imperial Oil, NOVA Chemicals, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Diamond Petrochemicals. Two responded. INEOS denied giving incorrect information to the ministry: “At no point have we underreported our emissions or misled the regulator,” Ludwikowski said. Imperial said it “complies with air emissions reporting requirements under the applicable regulations” but “wouldn’t be able to speak to documents” that it hasn’t seen.

Factories and oil refineries have given Sarnia’s Chemical Valley its name, but long before they arrived here, Aamjiwnaang First Nation has used the area along the St. Clair River, just south of Lake Huron. The nation’s name means “at the spawning stream” in Anishinaabemowin.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the flawed figures.

The documents obtained by The Narwhal show the current Progressive Conservative government has been aware of how much benzene INEOS was actually emitting since at least 2019, when a new air monitor started picking up high levels at times when the wind was blowing from the direction of the plant.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS spokesperson, said the company maintains “full transparency” in its emissions reporting.

“Property line emissions monitoring at our Sarnia site is conducted by independent third parties, in accordance with [Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks] requirements, ensuring there is no internal influence over the results,” Ludwikowski said in a statement. Ludwikowski and INEOS Styrolution did not directly answer follow-up questions.

Aamjiwnaang has been fighting environmental racism for decades. Now, the First Nation has an agreement to address it

The Ford government was scheduled to review the policy in 2023 but skipped it — despite a warning in the 2023 briefing for Khanjin that said updates are “needed.” The same document also noted companies would likely push back. 

“Industry is looking for further simplifications and relaxations,” the memo said. “Will be opposed to more stringent requirements.”

The update to the technical standard was one of several air pollution-related moves the government hadn’t followed through on, the memo indicated.

Another was a planned update to a policy that, among other things, was aimed at addressing the cumulative effects of benzene emissions from multiple facilities both in the Sarnia area and Hamilton. The previous Liberal government introduced the policy in its last few months of power in spring 2018 and committed to reviewing it by 2020, but the Progressive Conservatives did not follow through. 

In April, Aamjiwnaang’s band council temporarily closed access to the community’s cemetery after a benzene spill from the adjacent Suncor refinery. A few days earlier, the company spilled hundreds of litres of crude oil into the river.

Ontario allowed INEOS to emit benzene levels higher than what led to Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency 

In spring 2019, after the new air monitor near INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia facility started to show how high its benzene emissions were, the Environment Ministry issued the first in a series of compliance orders, mandating the company take steps to gradually cut its benzene emissions. 

Compliance orders are usually legally binding, and the ministry can use them to compel companies to fix issues and prevent harm to people and the environment. In practice, however, Aamjiwnaang has said the ministry failed to engage with the nation about the orders, which were not enough to protect people from contaminants.

“Aamjiwnaang has not been involved in the decision-making” Nahmabin told The Narwhal. “And that’s what we’re looking for, because this is our territory, this is our home.”

The goal of the spring 2019 order to INEOS was to eventually get average benzene emissions below 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre annually, and 30 micrograms per cubic metre over a two-week period. The figures were higher than Ontario’s health-based standards, but would reduce the cancer risks to people nearby, according to the government records obtained by The Narwhal. 

Annual averages of benzene exposure: Left: 0.45 micrograms per cubic metre is Ontario’s legal annual average for benzene emissions, based on the risk of cancer. Many industrial facilities in Sarnia, Ont., are exempt from this limit and instead follow technical standards that require certain emissions-reduction technologies be used. Right: 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre is the annual average the Ontario government told INEOS in 2019 it should aim to gradually reduce its benzene emissions to. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

But the order didn’t come with a strict limit and a timeline for getting there. It also appeared to clash with a letter the province sent in January of the same year, which included a looser target. They recommended benzene levels remain below an hourly average of up to 580 micrograms per cubic metre — three times more than the levels recorded in Aamjiwnaang as people went to the emergency room in 2024. Those benchmarks were based on standards from Texas, whose benzene limits are the loosest in the United States and have been criticized for putting residents at higher risk of cancer.

Aamjiwnaang Chief Nahmabin said the benchmarks were a “slap in the face.” 

“Why is that allowed when we’re right across the street?” she said. “That just seems very disheartening for the health of our community and our staff that are right there.”

Those January 2019 guidelines also included a limit of 30 micrograms per cubic metre over two weeks, in line with the province’s goal for INEOS. If the company breached it, the Environment Ministry warned it would be in touch to figure out the root cause and, “if necessary, identify corrective actions,” the letter said. The limits in the January 2019 letter were “not regulatory benchmarks,” the ministry wrote, but would instead be used to “assess acute exposures” of benzene.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS Styrolution spokesperson, said in her statement that the 580 micrograms per cubic metre was an “established” emissions limit set by the ministry, but did not answer follow up questions about it.

Despite the heavy presence and impacts of industry in Sarnia, nature is abundant around Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

“To further reduce emissions, INEOS Styrolution has proactively invested $50 million in modernizing the Sarnia plant,” Ludwikowski wrote. “As a result, our emissions have remained well below the [ministry’s] established limits of 580 [micrograms per cubic metre] over an hour. … These plans and timelines were developed collaboratively with the [ministry] and received full regulatory approval.”

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the benchmarks outlined in the January 2019 letter and how it applied them to INEOS. 

Air monitors near INEOS continued to detect spikes of benzene for five years after the ministry sent the company contrasting targets.

INEOS complied with the asks in the ministry’s 2019 order, but “elevated benzene emissions from the site” persisted in 2020, according to one internal ministry document. The ministry issued a second order that year asking the company to install more emissions control equipment. Those measures reduced benzene emissions in some areas around the plant, but not all, the ministry found — prompting it to send INEOS a third order in May 2023.

Benzene concentrations at one air monitor in particular “have increased every year following the issuance of the orders, indicating that benzene emissions at this location have not been addressed and may instead be worsening,” the 2023 order said.

The order also outlined six periods in 2022 and 2023 where air monitors detected “significantly elevated” concentrations of benzene from INEOS. In February 2022, for example, the ministry noted a two-week average of 122 micrograms per cubic metre, four times higher than the ministry’s goal for the facility. That August, the ministry detected an hourly average of 290 micrograms per cubic metre, a concentration of 100 cubic metres more than the peak levels of benzene that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang in spring 2024. An air monitor recorded even higher readings for three consecutive hours in January 2023, with levels in the 300s, the order said.

Hourly averages of benzene exposure: Left: 191 micrograms per cubic metre was the hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. Right: 580 micrograms per cubic metre is the hourly average Ontario instructed INEOS to use in 2019 to assess acute health risks. It’s also based on the Texas standards, and is several times higher than the levels that sent people in Aamjiwnaang to the hospital in 2024. Graphic: Andrew Munroe / The Narwhal

INEOS told the ministry the benzene emissions were caused by spills, planned maintenance and the “prolonged storage” of waste containing the chemical in one particular area, the document said. 

None technically violated the laws governing the company, even though benzene concentrations in Aamjiwnaang had been so high they would bring a “non-negligible risk of cancer for those who may be exposed to such concentrations over the long term,” the order, signed by a ministry officer, said. 

“I believe that the [INEOS] site continues to be the primary source of the elevated benzene concentrations measured within the [Aamjiwnaang] community and that additional measures are required.”

Those measures included more technological upgrades and requirements to notify the ministry about various aspects of the operation of INEOS Styrolution’s plant. Like the previous orders, they did not include firm emissions targets for the company. 

INEOS pushed back, according to a document prepared by ministry officials that outlined the context for air quality measures in Sarnia: “INEOS [is] concerned that orders require them to do too much, too soon. They believed that since they were complying with the [standard], they shouldn’t have to do more.”

Ludwikowski didn’t directly answer questions about the company’s conversations with the Ontario government. 

A storage tank at Shell’s refinery in Sarnia features ‘Ojibwe Spirit,’ a mural by Aamjiwnaang First Nation artist John Williams, unveiled in 2022 to honour the land and people of Aamjiwnaang.

By the end of 2023, Aamjiwnaang had maintained the orders were “inadequate and slow,” according to the late 2023 briefing. And in the meantime, a long-anticipated health study funded by the Ontario government reiterated what people from the First Nation have been saying for a long time: air pollution from Chemical Valley was putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang. First Nations were “frustrated,” the briefing noted, because “proven technologies exist that can better manage and control” emissions of benzene and other pollutants.

“They also believe that [the ministry] provides priority access to industry and that [the ministry] continues to ignore the First Nations’ input,” the briefing said.

In one meeting between ministry staff and the nation, Aamjiwnaang representatives warned the Ontario government it would “take actions into its own hands” if the ministry didn’t act quickly to limit air pollution. 

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the meeting, and it’s not clear what steps it might have taken afterwards. In a notice sent to INEOS in 2024, which the province publicly posted online, the ministry said it had developed new interim guidelines in December 2023 — the month after the health study was released — about how staff should interpret the risks posed by benzene exposure.

Those internal guidelines indicated exposures of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour, or 30 micrograms per cubic metre over 24 hours, would increase acute health risks. Those thresholds are dramatically lower than the 580 micrograms per hour the ministry recommended in its 2019 letter to INEOS, but still far higher than benzene standards that take long-term cancer risk into consideration.

A few months later, in April 2024, as benzene levels spiked in Aamjiwnaang and sent people to the emergency room, the ministry issued INEOS a fourth order. It required INEOS to notify the public if readings of benzene spiked, develop another plan to “address benzene from wastewater” and investigate where the carcinogen might be coming from. High levels of benzene were reported again a week later, prompting Aamjiwnaang to issue its state of emergency.

The following month, Ontario barred INEOS from storing benzene at its Sarnia site and suspended its approval to operate until the company made major repairs. The federal government stepped in at this point, issuing a temporary order to petrochemical companies in the area to cut benzene emissions. (The federal government has some jurisdiction to set nationwide air quality rules, like laws limiting emissions from new cars, but usually leaves local air quality rules to provinces and territories.)

Ontario followed suit, imposing benzene limits of its own on INEOS that came into effect that June. The limits, which remain in place, include a cap of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour. It limited annual average emissions to 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre — 10 times higher than the province’s usual air quality standards. 

Ludwikowski said those limits were “stringent” and “imposed without prior notice, consultation or a sufficient time for implementation.” INEOS temporarily shut down the plant following the ministry’s 2024 order, and soon announced it would close the plant entirely due to the “economics of the facility within a wider industry context.” It said the situation was unrelated to the benzene spikes. 

“We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Chief Nahmabin said. She continues the fight against industrial pollution in her community, and for an end to environmental racism here.

The process of shuttering the facility is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2025. Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency is still in place, and won’t be lifted as long as benzene continues to be stored at the site, Nahmabin said.

Benzene levels on Aamjiwnaang have mostly stayed lower since spring 2024, but the risk isn’t gone. As well as the most recent partial evacuation in mid-June, days before Nahmabin spoke to The Narwhal in late May, high benzene readings forced the community to close buildings and warn people away from the baseball diamond. In April, Aamjiwnaang temporarily closed access to the community’s cemetery after a benzene spill from the adjacent Suncor refinery — days after the company also spilled hundreds of litres of crude oil into the river. Suncor did not answer questions from The Narwhal about either incident.

In January, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada told the Sarnia Observer that without INEOS accepting benzene produced as a by-product at other sites in Chemical Valley, companies had resorted to moving it out of the region by ship, rail and truck. 

Aamjiwnaang has asked the province for copies of any approvals it has granted to companies to store benzene in the area, Nahmabin said. “The problem is not going away, we just want to make sure that it’s being handled safely.”

Nahmabin is hopeful governments now understand they have to work with Aamjiwnaang to fix their oversight of Chemical Valley.

“It’s a big can of worms, and it’s peeling back decades of environmental racism,” she said. 

“We see the gaps, and this is where we feel like we can step in to effectively regulate Chemical Valley, because we’re here. This is our homeland. This is our Traditional Territory.”

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Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the federal government will work together on a pilot project to address environmental racism.  

The nation, located in Sarnia, Ont., has spent decades fighting to stop pollution from a cluster of petrochemical plants known as Chemical Valley that surround it. On Monday, Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin and Environment and Climate Change Canada signed the terms of reference to kick off the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference, bringing together various nations, as well as industry and government, to discuss the impacts of development on communities. The terms of reference includes the creation of a new joint committee aimed at addressing contaminants in the air, water and soil.

The agreement stems from the federal government’s Bill C-226, a law aimed at addressing environmental racism — the ways Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities in Canada disproportionately bear the harm of pollution and contamination. The bill, which passed last year, requires Canada to come up with a national strategy to prevent and address environmental racism, in collaboration with the most affected communities.

“Today is a significant day that will chart a course that acknowledges the historic and ongoing injustices that people of Aamjiwnaang have endured,” Nahmabin told an audience at Aamjiwnaang’s community centre for the signing ceremony. 

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin, top right, signed terms of reference for addressing environmental racism with John Moffet, top left, the associate deputy minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, during the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference. The conference brought together various nations, as well as industry and government. Photos: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

“Although we are strong, resilient, beautiful people who are rich in community and ambition, we still have been impacted for decades by systematic pollution and lack of environmental protection … Aamjiwnaang will be a pilot for how this rolls out across Canada, and we are ready.”

Aamjiwnaang is an Ojibwe community tucked alongside the St. Clair River, a stone’s throw from the southern tip of Lake Huron. Studies have confirmed what many in the community have been saying for decades: air pollution from industrial plants, particularly the cancer-causing chemical benzene, are putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia.

The terms of reference, which were read aloud after the signing, lay the groundwork for Aamjiwnaang and Environment and Climate Change Canada to co-develop “tangible and meaningful” solutions through the joint committee. The federal government agreed to follow Aamjiwnaang’s protocols for consulting with the nation. The terms of reference also acknowledged the nation may need capacity funding to fully participate in the joint committee. 

The Suncor refinery, located near Aamjiwnaang First Nation, is one of many operating in the area around Sarnia. The nation experiences worse air quality than both Toronto and Ottawa, and even cities with comparable industrial development. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

John Moffet, an associate deputy minister at Environment and Climate Change Canada, signed the agreement on behalf of the federal government. In a speech before the signing ceremony, he thanked the nation for its leadership on environmental justice and said the government recognizes the need for trust and honesty.

“We have to be honest about how we got to where we are, honest about the actual impacts in the community,” he said. “We have to be honest with each other about what is possible for the future.” 

Aamjiwnaang has been pushing for change in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley for decades 

Sarnia has a long history with the petrochemical industry. The first oil well in North America was drilled just southeast of Sarnia in the mid-1800s, in a village now named Oil Springs. Further wells followed in the area and, in the 1890s, Imperial Oil bought one of the first refineries to open in Sarnia. More refineries also followed, and during the Second World War, synthetic rubber for the Allied forces was produced in Sarnia. 

More companies set up shop once the war ended, and today, Chemical Valley is home to about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

Air monitoring data shows Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, the nation has said. And the pollution is worse than in other cities with heavy industries — Aamjiwnaang experiences 10 times more benzene exposure than a city in California with a similar mix of facilities.

A state of emergency in Ontario’s Chemical Valley

Aamjiwnaang’s then-chief and council declared a state of emergency in April 2024, when air monitors in the community picked up massive spikes of benzene. The carcinogen appeared to be coming from the INEOS Styrolution plastics plant across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and people in the area were hit with headaches and nausea. Band members were warned to stay away from the office and outdoor recreation areas near the plant. Later in the fall, when the company removed benzene from a tank, part of the reserve was evacuated. 

Following the incident, both the Ontario government and Environment and Climate Change Canada ordered the company to cut its benzene emissions. The company temporarily shut down the plant last spring, and has since announced it will permanently shutter and decommission the site. But other industrial sites continue to emit pollutants and, in recent months, Aamjiwnaang has called on the provincial government to crack down and address the problem.

Chief Nahmabin told the crowd gathered for the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference that Aamjiwnaang First Nation can lead the way in addressing how environmental harm disproportionately affects Indigenous and other racialized communities in Canada. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

Speaking in Aamjiwnaang on Monday, Nahmabin acknowledged the efforts of people from the community who have spent years advocating for environmental justice, including some who have passed away. It will take time for the nation to undo years and years of environmental damage, Nahmabin said, but the nation knows what needs to change and is ready to lead the way. 

“What we want for our community is clean air, less pollution, pristine waters, plants we can grow and not be afraid to eat,” she said. “And the most basic ask for every living being on this planet: a healthy environment.”

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By January 2022, Heather Hanwell was at her wits’ end. Like many mothers she was bearing the bulk of the burden of education disruption in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a parent, she was angry and overwhelmed; as an epidemiologist she was puzzled by the province’s approach to keeping schools open, and students healthy.  

“They were making decisions that didn’t make sense,” she says of the Ontario government from her home in York Region, north of Toronto. Those decisions included ending case reporting in schools, data that could have provided valuable insight into how successful the government’s investment in health and safety measures were.  

As it cycled through school closures and reopenings, the Ministry of Education cited investments in improving air quality as making schools safer. But Hanwell wanted to see supporting data. She started asking questions about her daughter’s elementary school.  

Hanwell knew schools with mechanical systems were at an advantage compared to those with only partial ventilation systems or none. In general, mechanical ventilation systems support indoor air quality by bringing outdoor air in to dilute indoor air pollutants. 

A February 2021 air quality audit done by the Toronto Catholic District School Board on three schools illustrated how air quality in schools with mechanical ventilation had significantly lower carbon dioxide concentrations when compared to those without. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a proxy measure for air quality indoors because its concentration is a rough indicator of the ventilation rate per person and can be used to indicate whether a building is in compliance with suggested air quality standards. The Catholic school board report showed a Grade 7 and 8 class in one school without mechanical ventilation spent nine hours with carbon dioxide concentrations above what’s considered good and 4.5 hours above acceptable levels, and noted having the windows open did little to clear the air.

Heather Hanwell, left, was concerned when she wasn’t able to review air quality reports for her daughter Jane’s school. After requesting the report through freedom of information legislation, she realized her concerns were founded.

Portable high-efficiency particulate air filters, better known as HEPA filters, can also improve air quality by filtering infectious disease particles, mould, bacteria and outdoor pollutants that are brought in, including from car exhaust or wildfire smoke. The Ministry of Education only requires portable air filters in schools without mechanical ventilation, as well as in kindergarten and childcare spaces. Hanwell’s daughter’s classroom didn’t qualify. 

In the fall of 2022, Hanwell accelerated her concerns about a lack of HEPA usage with the school’s facilities manager. Hanwell says he assured her portable air filters in most classes weren’t necessary. The school’s mechanical heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC, system exceeded minimum air quality standards, he said, and matched both industry and public health advice. 

Hanwell asked to see an air quality audit to support the claim. When her request was ignored, she made a freedom of information request for it. 

The audit, which she shared with The Narwhal, confirmed what the facilities manager said: the school’s system did offer the suggested average of six air changes an hour. (Air change rates are another way to measure ventilation based on how many times the total volume of air in an indoor space is exchanged.) But it also revealed the complexity of assessing indoor air quality in a school building, where rates can vary in individual classrooms and over the course of a day. One classroom had only three air changes an hour.

For Hanwell, these are nuances that make a difference. 

“If you’re sending your kid to school, do you care what the average air change per hour is? You care about the air in their specific classroom,” she says. 

Children are more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution from cars, for example, because of their rapid respiration rate, activity levels and growing lungs. It’s one reason advocates are pushing for improved air quality in schools.

Hanwell isn’t the only parent-turned-indoor-amateur-air-quality-investigator to emerge from the pandemic. In the past four years, a small-but-active parent-led movement has cropped up in Ontario, acting as a bug in the ear of principals, boards, trustees and the Ministry of Education as they push for greater transparency about the scope of the government’s pandemic-era investments. They’re asking for carbon dioxide monitors in order to measure air quality in classrooms. They also want a healthy maximum carbon dioxide threshold, publicly reported data and an expert-led strategy that establishes measurable indoor air standards for all schools, in line with the most recent ventilation industry standards.

The new, COVID-driven parent movement joins experts and environmental organizations that have been advocating for improved air quality in schools and childcare spaces for much longer. 

The pandemic has given new purpose to this “time-worn” concern and its direct relationship to children’s health and wellbeing, Erica Phipps, executive director of the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment, says. 

“Those of us working on children’s environmental health have known for forever that children are more susceptible to the harm of exposure to adverse air quality and other toxicants and pollutants,” Phipps tells The Narwhal.

The impact of poor ventilation in the spaces where children spend the bulk of their days is a well-established risk factor for poorer outcomes in education and health. 

Kids in low-income neighbourhoods are more vulnerable to the cumulative effect of these impacts especially during extreme heat events, Jacqueline Wilson, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, says. 

“Forget COVID, poor ventilation is a problem in itself,”

University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Siegel

They’re more likely to live in neighbourhoods with less tree cover, she says, and in homes that don’t have air conditioning; schools therefore become a critical public health intervention. 

Aside from higher rates of infectious diseases, poor air quality in schools is linked to absenteeism and lower cognitive performance, including standardized tests results, University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Siegel says.

“Forget COVID,” Siegel, an air quality expert, says, “poor ventilation is a problem in itself.”

The need to tackle air quality issues in schools will only grow exponentially as the impacts of climate change increase. 

Data from the 2023 Lancet Countdown report underlines how much more often Canadians are exposed to wildfire smoke these days — a 220 per cent increase in 20 years.

Wildfire smoke’s complex mix of toxic gases and fine particulate matter are harmful to the heart, brain and respiratory system and have a direct impact on respiratory conditions. In 2023, exposure to wildfire smoke in Ontario was causally related to a 23 per cent increase in asthma-related emergency department visits. 

The long-term health implications of increased exposure to wildfire are the subject of ongoing research, including the link to increased incidences of heart disease and other chronic conditions. 

The pandemic brought the importance of indoor air quality to light, and there’s much to be learned in a future of increased wildfire smoke and air pollution. “Indoor air has always been important,” University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Siegel says. “It was important before the pandemic. It’ll be important after the pandemic.”

Protecting people from the harms of wildfire smoke and ambient air pollution includes plans for indoor air, says Angela Yao, a senior scientist at the Environmental Health Services at BC Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver. 

“Just being indoors is not enough. You need to be indoors with cleaner air,” she says.

The prospect of increased lifetime exposure to wildfire smoke poses both short-term and long-term health effects for kids, who are also more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution from diesel bus fumes, for example, because of their rapid respiration rate, activity levels and growing lungs. 

Indoor air quality is a public health issue, says Wilson, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, but it’s one that clearly intersects with environmental policy.

“There’s an immediate need to protect people’s health, and we need to act now,” she says.

Funding for ventilation rolled out during the COVID-19 pandemic. But where did it go?

Since August 2020, Ontario schools have been able to access around $660 million to improve indoor air quality by replacing ventilation system filters, windows, repairing systems and purchasing portable HEPA filters. The federal government kicked in 80 per cent of the funds and the province the remaining 20 per cent.  

In 2022, the Education Ministry told TVO less than 10 per cent of schools in Ontario lack mechanical ventilation. It’s unclear whether this encompasses older schools with newer additions, where some wings or buildings have updated ventilation and others don’t. The ministry did not respond to inquiries for comment on this story. 

On its website, the Toronto District School Board, Ontario’s largest board, says it received $81.6 million from the federal government to undertake various projects related to promoting health and safety measures and facility conditions. According to Jatin Amin, a senior manager in facility services and planning, Toronto’s board had spent $75.43 million of that money as of Aug. 31, 2024. 

But figuring out how much of it went directly to air quality upgrades is tricky. Amin confirms information found in documents advocates shared with The Narwhal, which indicate the cost of many HVAC projects were bundled with other pandemic-related upgrades like touchless entry points.

Mary Jo Nabuurs, a cofounder of Ontario School Safety, says the advocacy group is pushing for better air and better transparency around air quality in schools: “We just want to get some policy around this stuff. Let’s get some standards. Let’s measure them, report them, track them, fix them, whatever it is, because [the status quo] is inequitable.”

“The $81.6 million was for projects including ventilation, windows, water bottle-filling stations, Wi-Fi, outdoor playground sitting areas, etc.,” Amin says. 

For anyone wondering how that money was spent, or where more investment is needed, each board’s publicly available ventilation report provides basic information on which schools have partial or full mechanical ventilation, if it’s been assessed, as well as if there are portable air filters in the school and how many. 

It doesn’t post a system’s age, capabilities or air quality assessment publicly or indicate whether the filters are still in use. So regardless of where or how that pandemic-related funding for ventilation was spent, there are scant details on how effective it was and still is. Understanding the reality of the work undertaken — and its impact — requires more information, argue parent-advocates.

“It’s not a report,” Farheen Mahmood, a parent-advocate based in Toronto, says. “It’s just a checklist.” 

In some schools, staff members have taken on the task of tracking just how effective pandemic-era investments have been at clearing the indoor air.

Andrew Dobbie, an elementary school teacher in southern Ontario, says his school was able to do a full retrofit of its HVAC system with the government’s pandemic funding. In 2020, Dobbie started bringing a monitor to work to check the carbon dioxide levels and even measured the presence of harmful particulate matter like that found in vehicle exhaust, and says the overall air quality has vastly improved as a result of the retrofit. 

“But we still have areas in the building that have relatively poor air quality,” he says, which could be helped with portable air filters, which the school relied on prior to the upgrade. The filters were noisy, which made teaching difficult, and are now gone. He’s not sure where they went. 

Anecdotally, many parent-advocates complain about the use, misuse or non-use of portable air filters.

Mahmood says in her experience use comes down to individual teachers. Her youngest child’s teacher understood the value of keeping hers on and even allowed her to put a carbon dioxide monitor in the class. But at her older children’s middle school and high schools, she says it’s entirely different. 

“The filters aren’t on. They are used as coffee tables, or they are out of place.”

Investment information is one thing, but transparency about how effective that investment has been is another, parent-advocate Mary Jo Nabuurs says.

“How well is it working?” Nabuurs, who co-founded the advocacy group Ontario School Safety, says.

Through the pandemic, parents formed an online community focused on improving air quality in schools, Nabuurs says. But their fight for better air has continued beyond the pandemic, with so many environmental factors also degrading the air in classrooms.

Parents have little recourse when it comes to pinpointing accountability. But blaming teachers or principals is counterproductive in the view of Siegel, the University of Toronto professor. He’d like to see an autonomous body put in place, either federally or provincially, to do the hard work of oversight when it comes to maintaining healthy air in schools.

Joey Fox, an HVAC engineer for an Ontario school board and chair for the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers Indoor Air Quality Advisory Group, says in addition to funding, school boards got basic guidance about optimizing air quality that aligned with minimum industry standards from the province. Those minimum standards don’t apply to infection control, but are mostly designed to ensure there’s no strong odours present, Fox explains. 

“If these measures were implemented, it is likely they improved the air quality, but we really do not know how much and if it was substantial or minimal. There were no standards applied, no oversight and there was no system to test the air, so we do not know how effective it was,” Fox says. 

He says it’s also unclear if places are still taking the same measures they were at the height of the pandemic, though he believes some are.

Both Fox and Siegel are sympathetic to the scope of the task governments faced in 2020, a challenge that remains daunting now. “This is not easy stuff,” Siegel says, and indoor air quality is not yet part of building codes in schools.

The province hasn’t publicly acknowledged changing standards when it comes to improving air quality either. 

As Toronto gets hotter, not everyone is sweating equally

In 2023, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers introduced an air quality standard designed to support the challenge of airborne disease transmission. In a Medium post that July, Fox broke those standards down for typical classroom spaces based on occupancy. For elementary school classrooms with a maximum of 20 kids in the class, the recommended air change rate is equivalent to 6.7 air changes an hour; in high schools, it’s equivalent to nine air changes an hour.

And while this standard is designed to tackle airborne disease transmission, the combination of increasing ventilation and filtration efforts it demands could “theoretically” confer overall benefits to air quality, including reducing pollutants, Fox says. 

Fox characterizes Ontario’s pandemic-era scramble to address schools’ ventilation issues as “here’s money, do what you can,” but says the province deserves credit for trying. “To be fair,” he says, “other provinces didn’t have unified strategies. Ontario did take steps.”

While the complexity of addressing air quality isn’t to be underestimated, Siegel argues the amount spent was wholly insufficient to address the scope of undertaking such a project across Ontario’s 4,500 aging schools.

The amount of investment “has been low, the quality of that investment has been poor and the effect is probably minimal,” he says. 

How do we clear the air in Ontario schools?

To bring schools up to standard would necessitate an investment in the billions, akin to the investment needed to reduce class sizes, Siegel says. That level conflicts with a decades-long trend of underfunding education in Ontario. 

As a result of underfunding by both Liberal and Conservative governments, Ontario schools have accumulated a significant maintenance and repair backlog of at least $16.8 billion. 

Chandra Pasma, NDP Education critic, believes the number is “undoubtedly higher.” 

The province’s response has been to commit $1.4 billion a year through its combined school condition improvement and school renewal funding, which Pasma says isn’t even “enough to fund the repair backlog of a couple years ago. We’re going to have this gap continuing to grow.”

Pasma has pushed forward a private member’s bill. The goal of Bill 140 is to have carbon dioxide monitors installed in classrooms, with an established maximum level, and a comprehensive expert-led air quality action plan. 

She’s unsure whether the bill has a future. There are so many pressing needs in education, she says.

A December 2024 report by the provincial Financial Accountability Office underlines the need for greater investment in Ontario schools. According to that report, nearly 40 per cent of Ontario’s schools are in a state of poor repair, ventilation systems included.

Climate change is shifting what’s needed of ventilation systems in schools, with air filtration and air conditioning becoming increasingly critical.

The Toronto District School Board is cited in the report as one of the boards with the greatest need for investment, with 84 per cent of its schools falling short of the good repair threshold. The board has a $4-billion repair backlog, nearly half of which can be attributed to its mechanical repair and maintenance needs, says Richard Christie, senior manager, sustainability for the Toronto board’s facility services and planning. 

“Parents want this to be solved. But people need to be more forthcoming about what effort is required to achieve it,” Christie says. “It’s not a few years of funding for projects. What we need is significant sustained funding over a long period.”

Unfortunately, the tap has slowed to a trickle as pandemic-related funding dries up. 

That doesn’t bode well for schools’ ability to factor in the need for building out their climate resilience in the coming years. While few could have predicted COVID-19 and the rapid upgrades and shifts it required, we know extreme heat and wildfire smoke are certain to become more frequent and deadly occurrences, Siegel says. 

Ontario’s 2023 Climate Change Impact Assessment concluded southern parts of the province could face more than 60 days with temperatures of 30 C or more by 2080, compared to an average of nine extremely hot days currently. Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy has identified extreme heat as the deadliest weather event in Canada, Wilson says, adding these events are often coupled with exposure to wildfire smoke. 

“Three things get worse, certainly duration and number of extreme temperature events, frequency and severity of wildfires, and also frequency and severity of ambient air pollution events,” Siegel says.

Keeping indoor air healthy during these events will become more challenging and require more established knowledge about best practices, Siegel says.

“Kids are literally sticking to the seat. They’re crying. It’s a write-off,”

Elementary school teacher Kimiko Shibata

Prompted by increased concern over prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke, in November 2024, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers introduced new guidelines that underline the importance of prioritizing filtration as well as the use of sensors that monitor indoor concentrations of harmful particulate matter.  

Yao, the B.C. environmental scientist, agrees that understanding the capacity of individual mechanical ventilation systems within individual schools — what these systems are equipped to filter out and to what degree — is imperative. They may have to be supplemented by portable air filters appropriate to the space, she says, adding air particulate sensors in classrooms would even better equip us to understand the quality of air in classrooms. 

Robert Lepage, a building science engineer based in Waterloo who focuses on climate resilience, says there needs to be a sea change in how we assess the health and safety of schools, moving from historical concerns about heating to cooling. 

“The predominant focus in Canadian building codes has been that of cold- dominated climate concern, i.e. people freezing,” he says. 

Climate change is hitting Ontario’s farms hard. Why won’t the government talk about it?

Climate change challenges that guidance for design, and going forward, “every single building everywhere in Canada will probably need some sort of mechanical cooling, at least in one room or so.”

Even schools that do have mechanical ventilation systems may not have central air conditioning. The need for schools to address a lack of sufficient cooling is urgent. As with rental units, Ontario has a legally mandated minimum temperature in schools, but no mandated maximum. And as with rental units, many would like to see an acceptable maximum established, and enforced.

Kimiko Shibata, an elementary school educator in Kitchener, Ont., says many of the schools she’s worked in have had primitive mechanical ventilation and no air conditioning. In addition to making kids miserable and feel unwell, extreme heat in poorly ventilated spaces affects their ability to focus and learn. 

“Kids are literally sticking to the seat. They’re crying. It’s a write-off,” she says.

Samantha Green, a family doctor at Unity Health in Toronto, says her child’s school doesn’t have air conditioning either. When temperatures reach extremes, classes rotate in and out of the air-conditioned gym. 

Her concern for her child’s well being led her to dig into the literature around extreme heat and children’s health. Underlying medical conditions like asthma can worsen, and learning outcomes often take a nosedive, she says. 

Christie, who authors the Toronto school board’s annual Climate Action Report, says this will be the first year it moves from discussing long-term mitigation efforts like reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to stressing the urgent need for immediate climate adaptation in school buildings. 

“We need to think about it now, plan for it and sort out the funding,” he says. “We can’t sit on our hands.” 

“We really need a partner with the Ministry of Education that understands that investments are required for ventilation but also cooling.”

Last April, the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment released a report on indoor air quality that called on governments to establish clear and comprehensive policy addressing both longstanding concerns about schools, including radon and exposure to diesel bus fumes, as well as the impacts of climate change. And, it said, it’s time to plan accordingly. The tools to make these changes already exist, the report said, listing occupational health legislation, public health mandates and human rights codes that could be deployed to protect students and teachers. 

If passed, a private members bill, Bill 140, would require carbon dioxide monitors in Ontario classrooms, with an established maximum level, and a comprehensive expert-led air quality action plan.

Some advocates are seeing change, like Waterloo’s Clean Air For All. Through sustained parent-led activism, it helped push the Waterloo Region District School Board to establish an air quality committee and, in 2023, use carbon dioxide monitoring to investigate the air in three schools to determine the usefulness of placing monitors in classrooms. 

In October 2024, the Waterloo board ratified its first clean indoor air policy, probably the first in the province. 

The policy is still beholden to Education Ministry standards. But it marks a baby step in the board’s willingness to make the conversation public — and to protect students.

Hanwell’s 11-year-old daughter Jane has caught the air-quality investigating bug. She takes a carbon dioxide monitor to class in her pencil case each day. 

A few of her classmates are curious, she says, and come to her desk asking to know the readings and what affects them. “Fresh air makes the numbers go low,” she tells them. “The bad air that we breathe makes the numbers go high.”

Updated on Feb. 7, 2025, at 10:08 p.m. EST: This story has been updated to correct a statement that portable high efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters remove carbon dioxide. Portable filters remove air particles, not gases, like carbon dioxide.

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Across North America, ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment. The odorless gas is useful, but it’s also toxic to humans when high amounts are breathed in. And, according to a newly obtained document, the federal government is unclear how much of the chemical companies release into Canadian air. 

The document is a draft version of a Health Canada report on ethylene oxide obtained by The Narwhal through access to information legislation. It’s part of an ongoing “performance measurement evaluation” the federal department is doing to assess the health risks of 13 substances classified as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. 

Currently, guidelines developed in 2005 stipulate that companies that use, transfer or dispose of 10 tonnes or more of ethylene oxide must self-report to the National Pollutant Release Inventory. In the draft report, Health Canada notes “significant” amounts of the chemical might be going unreported, due to “a possible problem with compliance or with the reporting threshold of the [pollutant release inventory], which may be set too high … .”

The draft also notes Environment and Climate Change Canada’s “air quality laboratory faces challenges in both sampling and analyzing [ethylene oxide]” due to technological limitations. It also says ethylene oxide is not monitored nationally because “there is no accredited method to report data.” 

Ethylene oxide has been considered to have “a probability of harm at any level of exposure” by Environment Canada and Health Canada since 1999. But a quarter-century later, there are no enforceable federal limits for the carcinogenic toxin, as The Narwhal reported in a May 2024 story about medical sterilization company Sterigenics, which has long used the chemical at its operations in the Greater Toronto Area. 

Sotera Health, the Ohio-based company that owns Sterigenics in Mississauga, Ont., has been named in a series of American lawsuits brought by claimants who say they developed illnesses, particularly cancers including leukemia, myeloma, lymphoma and breast cancer, because of ethylene oxide exposure. The company has agreed to pay American claimants in Illinois and Georgia almost US$450 million, although it’s also said the settlements should not be considered an “admission of liability.” 

A Mississauga factory is using a known carcinogen. Residents had no idea

Canada’s single biggest reporter of ethylene oxide between 2020 and 2023 was the waste management company Clean Harbors. Its Red Deer, Alta., facility topped the national list all four of those years, the most recent for which data is available. The newly obtained draft report shows several potential sources of ethylene oxide emissions across the country for which Health Canada says it has incomplete data on just how much is going into the air. 

Most are sterilization facilities, but emissions also occur when leftover ethylene oxide products, like used canisters from the sterilization sector, are collected and transferred to landfills or other sites where they can be safely disposed. There is very little public information on exactly how this waste and transfer industry operates.  

Elaine MacDonald, the program director of healthy communities at the charity Ecojustice, said Canada too often defaults to softer approaches to monitoring, rather than “enforceable regulations and standards” for ethylene oxide emissions.

“We really don’t have any rules federally” about how much ethylene oxide companies are allowed to empty into the air and environment, she said. “We just have these guidelines that are 20 years out of date.”

The draft report obtained by The Narwhal was being worked on between May and September 2024, perhaps earlier. It notes in its pages several gaps that need to be filled in, including many details on waste disposal and transfer. Health Canada told The Narwhal its planned publication date is summer 2025. 

“There’s a big gap to catch up there, and it needs to be done quickly,” MacDonald added. “My one concern is that Canada can take a really long time to get federal regulations and rules into place.” 

Level of ethylene oxide use that triggers reporting should be lowered: Health Canada

Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory is a public record of releases, disposals and transfers of potentially harmful substances. Reporting is done by companies themselves — including those that use or dispose of 10 tonnes or more of ethylene oxide. 

That threshold may be too high, the Health Canada draft notes as it recommends a reduction. As evidence, it points to 2009 air quality tests in B.C. where a number of sites met or exceeded the guideline for the chemical, yet no facilities reported using it to the inventory that year. 

In recent years, Alberta has by far the highest use of ethylene oxide recorded by Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory, which requires companies to self-report release, disposal and transfer of various chemicals and substances. Source: National Pollutant Release Inventory / Government of Canada. Chart: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

This advice is being repeated by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Between October and December, that department held consultations on what lowering the threshold could mean for industries and researchers that use the chemical, promising a decision on reporting requirements in “winter 2025.” Its consultation document proposes reducing the reporting requirement to the release, disposal or transfer of just one kilogram of ethylene oxide, instead of 10 tonnes. 

“New information has come to light in both Canada and the United States that shows [ethylene oxide] toxicity is more potent than originally thought,” the report reads, including a 2016 publication from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showing inhalation of ethylene oxide is 30 times more toxic than previously thought. 

‘Like using a machine gun to kill a rabbit’

— Paul Belanger, Keepers of the Water, on using ethylene oxide for medical sterilization

“We’re missing some facilities, and it’s likely because of that high threshold,” Environment and Climate Change Canada scientist Alicia Berthiaume said in an interview. She was the one tasked with recommending a new reporting limit. “We’re proposing to lower it … so that we can really capture the users and releasers that are contributing to emissions in Canada.”

Berthiaume said the lower threshold shouldn’t be a challenge for industry to meet given “substantially more stringent requirements coming online in the U.S.” In spring 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tightened air pollution controls on the sterilization sector, seeking to reduce the industry’s emissions by more than 90 per cent. 

Even with a lowered threshold, companies would still be self-reporting their use of ethylene oxide. Observers are critical.  

“How well are the fugitive emissions being tracked? What we’re counting on right now is reporting from … producers, and I’m always skeptical of those numbers because that’s self-reporting,” Paul Belanger, science advisor for the Alberta environmental organization Keepers of the Water, said. “The emissions, I’m assuming, are probably worse than what they’re reporting.”

Even if the amount that triggers a federal reporting requirement is lowered, it would be up to provinces to initiate any new environmental or health monitoring, as they have authority over air emissions and protections.

Alberta industry an outsized contributor to ethylene oxide use in Canada

Between 1993 and 2013, ethylene oxide reporting across Canada was on a fairly steady decline. Then, in 2014, it began moving up again. The national pollution inventory saw Canada’s highest-ever reporting of ethylene oxide releases, disposals and transfers in 2021, the Health Canada draft report says. 

Much of that increase occurred in Alberta, a drastically outsized contributor to ethylene oxide. In 2021 the province contributed 77 per cent of the entire country’s releases, transfers and disposals. In 2022, although lower, Alberta still reported 67 per cent of the total amount of ethylene oxide on the national inventory. 

In Environment Canada’s document, one Alberta facility stands out: it’s run by Clean Harbors, which provides services like hazardous waste management and emergency spill cleanup for many industries, including government agencies. The company’s location in Red Deer is responsible for over 65 per cent of the total amount of ethylene oxide reported to the federal inventory in 2022. 

A facility run by Clean Harbors in Red Deer, Alta., is one of Canada’s highest reported users of ethylene oxide. Photo: tripletenphoto / iStock

Belanger said this information about Alberta’s outsized impact is “not surprising,” especially since he’s known for a while that ethylene oxide is produced with fossil fuels in Alberta.

But use doesn’t necessarily mean emissions and the Health Canada draft shows there’s no clear picture of whether these transfers and waste disposals are emitting anything into the air. The department has a lot of questions about the use of the chemical in waste management. Health Canada’s report reads, “No further information has been provided by industry to explain this process or how it is getting disposed of.” 

“I don’t know why this is the case,” one agency staffer wrote in a comment in the draft’s margin, noting they and others had been unable to find out how the disposal and transfer process works, even after asking federal government air quality researchers. 

Health Canada doesn’t name Clean Harbors, saying only that “one specific [Alberta] facility reported a significant amount” of ethylene oxide, and that facilities like these “need to be followed up with to better understand this increase.” 

When asked by The Narwhal, Environment Canada said the agency does not do routine monitoring of ethylene oxide, nor does it monitor air around individual facilities. That means that so far, no federal tests have been done to determine how much, if any, ethylene oxide Clean Harbors’ Red Deer waste operations are emitting into the air despite high levels of reporting on the inventory. “Staff are currently looking in more detail at this facility” in case there is “a data integrity issue,” a department spokesperson said. 

Clean Harbors did not respond to questions about its Alberta operations sent by email. The company’s website says it operates across North America, including in eight provinces.

“I was actually quite surprised how much [ethylene oxide] was being reported in the waste stream,” researcher Fe de Leon of the Canadian Environmental Law Association said after checking the national pollutant registry. “To me, it’s like, okay, so are we not spending enough time looking at that pathway?”

Unlike other provinces, Alberta has not updated its guideline for ethylene oxide levels in air since the chemical was classified as toxic in 2001 — an assessment Environment Canada’s document notes was “based primarily on carcinogenic effects to humans from exposure by inhalation.”Alberta’s Environment Ministry did not respond to interview requests. 

The future of medical sterilization, with or without ethylene oxide

Unlike waste management, the medical sterilization industry has come under intense scrutiny for how its ethylene oxide use could potentially be harming public health, as seen in the U.S. lawsuits against Sterigenics.   

In 2021, Environment Canada researchers found “detectable plumes” of ethylene oxide, which they called a “human carcinogen,” near a now-closed Sterigenics factory in a densely populated east Toronto neighbourhood. 

Sterigenics did not respond to recent questions about how it is protecting workers and the nearby community from ethylene oxide emissions at its Mississauga plant. Last year, it said the facility “deploys the most advanced safety and environmental technology available.” Photo: Sid Naidu / The Narwhal

In 2022, Sterigenics closed that plant and moved to Mississauga, on the west side of Toronto. Sterigenics did not respond to recent questions about how it is protecting workers and the nearby community from emissions: last August, it told The Narwhal its “state-of-the-art Mississauga facility deploys the most advanced safety and environmental technology available and was constructed in full compliance with federal, provincial and local regulations.” 

Neither the City of Mississauga nor the federal government monitors the air outside the factory for ethylene oxide: when asked, both noted that is a job for the province. In the past year, The Narwhal has sent 17 emails and made five phone calls asking Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks how it protects Mississauga residents from ethylene oxide and if there are plans to study the chemical further. In response, it has received only two emails that said the ministry does “not have any input at this time.”

How Ontario allows industry to evade air pollution rules

On its website, Sterigenics maintains that using ethylene oxide is “the sterilization method with the broadest application available for medical products and medical devices.” 

But governments seem less convinced. When establishing stricter emissions controls on the sterilization sector last spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called ethylene oxide “one of the most potent cancer-causing chemicals.”

And in its draft report, Health Canada disagrees ethylene oxide is the only sterilization option. “There seems to be readily available alternatives that are safer and less costly,” the draft evaluation reads, proposing hydrogen peroxide and steam, among others.

“Something as toxic as ethylene oxide, where there’s potential points of exposure throughout the country … requires some really strong rules and high levels of control,” MacDonald said. “If there’s sectors that are using it unnecessarily, where they’re safer options, that should definitely be a consideration, too.”

Belanger echoed MacDonald’s desire to phase out ethylene oxide, calling the chemical “unstable” and “dangerous,” adding its use for sterilization instead of alternatives is “like using a machine gun to kill a rabbit.”

Health Canada’s evaluation, when it is eventually published, will not be a rule or regulation. Rather, it’s an assessment of how well existing risk management strategies are working, and to identify “any areas of improvement that should be addressed moving forward” in protecting Canadians. The draft notes ethylene oxide is no longer allowed in cosmetics or used as a food additive. 

Given the report is still just a draft, it remains unclear whether the federal government considers the air quality risk posed by ethylene oxide to have been effectively managed already. As of the date The Narwhal received these records in fall 2024, the Health Canada draft concluded “the Government of Canada has achieved its objectives set out to protect Canadians from the risks posed by this substance.” 

But in January the department told The Narwhal that “no conclusions have been made at this time.”

Updated Feb. 7, 2025, at 4:17 p.m. ET: This story was updated to correct the amount of ethylene oxide use, transfer or disposal that triggers reporting on the National Pollutant Release Inventory. It is 10 tonnes, not 10 kilograms. Environment and Climate Change Canada is recommending it be reduced to one kilogram.

Updated Feb. 18, 2025, at 7:08 p.m. ET: This story was updated to clarify that the National Pollutant Release Inventory does not track how much ethylene oxide is used in Canada. Companies are required to self-report to the inventory when 10 tonnes or more of the chemical is manufactured, processed, transferred, disposed of or otherwise used, and the inventory does not track which.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When a company plans a new factory in Ontario that will regularly emit toxic chemicals, there are two ways it can get a permit. One is simple and has little oversight, while the other is more stringent and scrutinized. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry introduced the two-level permitting process as part of the Open for Business initiative back in 2010, under the Dalton McGuinty government. The idea was that by splitting up the process, low-risk permits could move along quicker in order to reduce a hefty backlog and shorten wait times for approvals.But a generation later, it’s not clear how exactly the provincial government determines which path a company must take when pursuing an industrial project that could impact the environment or human health. Environmental advocates say this leads to confusion, lax regulation and harmful emissions potentially slipping through the cracks — and limits the public’s opportunities to weigh in.

For riskier activities, such as making changes to a municipal drinking water system or taking more than 50,000 litres of water per day, the long-standing, more rigorous Environmental Compliance Approval remains in place.

The newer Environmental Activity and Sector Registry process was established for “less complex, lower risk” industrial activities such as “non-hazardous waste transportation” and “small ground-mounted solar facilities.” Ultimately, the goal was “making Ontario more attractive for business development.” 

People walk along the harbour in Hamilton, Ont., a city where some industrial facilities have been granted exemptions to the province’s air pollution regulations. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

This change was something lawyer Ramani Nadarajah spoke against at the time. Formerly a lawyer for the Ministry of the Environment, representing the provincial Crown in environmental prosecutions and appeals, Nadarajah was working at the Canadian Environmental Law Association in 2010. She was one of three authors of a detailed report to the ministry, sent on behalf of several major environmental law organizations, that  outlined concerns about immediate and long-term oversight. 

Nadarajah told The Narwhal that her early worries centred around the government leaving monitoring up to industry. The ministry did “not appear to have any plan in place to ensure inspections and enforcement of these types of activities,” Nadarajah said. “The [Environmental Activity and Sector Registry] regime’s really a form of self-regulation. There’s really no government oversight.”

Since then, she said, things have only gotten worse. “They’ve essentially just deregulated the entire sector,” Nadarajah said.

While provincial regulations and standards apply to activities that could also harm water and land, this story focuses on air pollution. Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks is responsible for regulating contaminants released into the air “by various sources, including local industrial and commercial facilities, to limit exposure to substances that can affect human health and the environment,” according to the province’s air quality rules.  

There is no transparent, publicly available explanation of how the Environment Ministry decides which permit a plant requires — its website says the stricter compliance approval is necessary for operations that will be “releasing contaminants into the environment,” but also that the self-directed registry could cover “activities that discharge or may discharge contaminants into the air.”

The Environment Ministry did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about how it decides which of these regulations to apply to industrial facilities, or how it ensures the safety of residents and the environment around those with less stringent permits. 

Two-tiered regulation for industry emissions in Ontario

There are a few key differences between the two pathways for industrial regulation in Ontario, the long-standing Environmental Compliance Approval and the Environmental Activity and Sector Registry introduced in 2010.

On one hand, Environmental Compliance Approvals “allow businesses to operate with environmental controls protecting human health and the environment,” the province’s page on the permit reads. Controls vary based on a facility’s operations; the ministry may dictate, for example, that a company can only operate 60 days per year at a given site, or the amount of certain chemicals used not exceed an allotted amount. 

To determine any controls, technical analyses submitted by the company are vetted by technical and scientific staff at the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, a process the ministry’s site says it aims to finish within a year, but Nadarajah says often takes longer because of delays and backlog. It includes a mandatory 30-day public comment period allowing nearby residents, environmental groups and other stakeholders to participate. 

Here’s a real example of how the process can work: in 2020, Motor Coils Manufacturing in Brockville, Ont., submitted information about the oven it uses to make equipment for rail lines, which exhausts into the air. The company’s eventual Environmental Compliance Approval asserts it can only use this oven if certain hazardous materials, including Teflon, aren’t part of the process, and if a certain minimum temperature is maintained at all times. There are also rules around record-keeping and making those records available on request.   

On the other hand, the Environmental Activity and Sector Registry simply requires online self-registration. A company submits a nine-page checklist to the ministry’s online portal, and the process can often be completed within a matter of months. To register for air emissions, a company has to pay a fee of $2,353 and can commence operations as soon as it submits a form and is listed on the public registry.

This registry was meant to “reduce the burden on industry who wanted to operate in Ontario,” researcher Fe de Leon, Nadarajah’s colleague at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said. It is nominally meant for what the province calls “less complex operations” that have a lower chance of harming the environment. 

“There’s not a lot of scrutiny around it, and there’s not a lot of accountability,” de Leon said.

The registry does not require companies to submit a formal application to be reviewed by the ministry. Nadarajah said she raised concerns about the lack of ministry staff involvement in 2010, as well as the lack of a standard process for ongoing monitoring. 

The Sterigenics factory in Mississauga has the less stringent of Ontario’s two air emissions permits. Neither the company nor the provincial Environment Ministry responded to questions about how the decision not to request or require a stricter approval was made. Photo: Sid Naidu / The Narwhal

Some controversial operations have ended up in this category. The Narwhal recently reported on two Ontario facilities — a plastics factory in North Bay owned by Industrial Plastics Canada and Sterigenics, a sterilization company in Mississauga — that are on the registry despite public concern about the potential harm of their operations. The Environment Ministry and Industial Plastics Canada didn’t acknowledge questions about how the decisions not to seek or require an approval were made. Sterigenics sent an email saying that its “state-of-the-art Mississauga facility deploys the most advanced safety and environmental technology available and was constructed in full compliance with federal, provincial and local regulations.”

Nadarajah said there has been a “disturbing trend by the ministry” of adding industrial activities to the self-registration stream, which she says “would have very significant adverse impact on the environment.” There’s also less opportunity for citizens to voice concerns, since the registry doesn’t require a public comment period.

“Not only have we lost government oversight as a result of [the Environmental Activity and Sector Registry], but there’s also no public oversight as well,” Nadarajah said.

Other experts have also raised concerns about what is lost with the public comment period.

“Good governance should involve the public in all facets of decision-making, and not only so that the public has an opportunity to voice potential concerns, but also as a process of education,” Carly Dokis, a resident of North Bay, earlier told The Narwhal. The Nipissing University professor works to encourage citizens, including Anishinaabe communities in northern Ontario, to participate in environmental governance for mines and mass contamination sites.

“Public engagement is a two-way conversation,” Dokis said. “It’s also an opportunity to engage in dialogue … so that the company can learn what the concerns of the community are, and the community can learn how the operator is going about … ensuring that there is no environmental impact. That opportunity for dialogue becomes missed when public engagement is stifled.” 

The self-directed environmental registry Ontario introduced in 2010 doesn’t require a public comment period, which would ensure residents can share concerns or questions about the risks of industrial air emissions. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Other ways industry can avoid Ontario’s air pollution standards

Five years before the 2010 registry, McGuinty’s Environment Ministry introduced a system of “technical” and “site-specific standards” that allowed certain industries and factories to eschew air regulations. A site-specific standard allows a company to apply for an exemption for a specific location where it cannot meet regulatory limits to contain or limit emissions because it doesn’t have or can’t afford adequate technology. 

In 2010, the standards combined with the self-registration regime to essentially make provincial air standards optional, Nadarajah said. 

“Air standards that are set were established to ensure they didn’t cause adverse impact on the environment and the focus of the ministry should be to ensure that we encourage and provide incentives for companies to actually meet the standards as opposed to exempting them,” Nadarajah added. 

Site-specific exemptions are now common in three Ontario regions known for degraded air quality, where they override regulation for a slew of contaminants, including benzene.

They’ve been granted to infamous “Chemical Valley” plants — including plastics plants emitting benzene at levels more than 400 times higher than guidelines around Sarnia, Ont., and Aamjiwnaang First Nation. According to the law association, facilities in Hamilton and Nanticoke are emitting up to 11,000 times allowable levels for benzene and benzo(a)pyrene because of these types of alternative air standards. 

And in Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma Steel was granted permission to emit benzene at a level the ministry noted was five times its own benzene air standard. These permissions typically have an expiry date: the provincial environment registry notes this one was extended in 2021 until June 2023 but has no information about any extension granted since then. An undated document on Algoma’s website says the company is working towards no longer needing a site-specific standard by 2029. The company did not respond to emailed questions about whether it is currently meeting provincial air standards or whether its operations pose a threat to human health.

Technical standards are similar, but apply to entire industries, such as petrochemicals. A technical standard remains the rule across an industry even if individual companies can actually meet regulatory requirements. 

The Canadian Environmental Law Association is calling for a systematic review of site-specific standards and technical standards, as well as additional public notice and public engagement. 

For her part, Nadarajah wants site-specific and technical standards phased out entirely. She believes an entire overhaul of the system, rather than incremental change, is necessary to protect the people and environment in Ontario and that the ministry should “be investing the time and energy” to ensure companies control emissions of hazardous chemicals.

“I think the current system is actually broken,” she said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The drive west along the 401 into Mississauga is lined with factories, box stores, furniture outlets and timber suppliers. It’s an industrial area, but also a commuters’ hub, where people from across the Greater Toronto Area come to gather at mosques, temples and weddings in splashed-out convention centres.

Residents seem unaware of a facility in an inconspicuous office building at the intersection of Ambassador Drive and Kennedy Road South, one that uses an invisible and odourless carcinogenic gas.

The plant is owned by Sterigenics, which sterilizes medical supplies, like respirators, using ethylene oxide — an effective sterilant of heat-sensitive devices used by many of North America’s doctors, hospitals and health centres. Ethylene oxide emissions are toxic to humans when high amounts are breathed in and the chemical has been considered to have “a probability of harm at any level of exposure” by Environment Canada and Health Canada since 1999. 

Sotera Health, the Ohio-based company that owns Sterigenics, has been named in a series of American lawsuits brought by claimants who say they developed illnesses, particularly cancers including leukemia, myeloma, lymphoma and breast cancer, because of ethylene oxide exposure. In 2023, the company agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit in Illinois, paying claimants US$408 million. It’s also paying out US$35 million in Georgia. In both instances, Sterigenics said the settlements should not be considered an “admission of liability.” A New Mexico case is pending.  

But while there has been outrage over the chemical in the U.S., some people in Canada don’t seem to know about it yet. The Toronto-area neighbourhoods where Sterigenics placed its past and current factories — Scarborough and Mississauga — are also home to some of the region’s largest immigrant communities.  

Homes, a mall and several businesses surround a former Sterigenics plant in Scarborough, Ont. Environment and Climate Change Canada researchers recorded high levels of ethylene oxide in the surrounding air in 2021.

From at least 2004 to 2022, Sterigenics had a facility in southwest Scarborough. There, in late 2021, federal government researchers found “detectable plumes” of ethylene oxide, which they called “a human carcinogen,” in a neighbourhood known as the Golden Mile. According to the researchers, the plumes spread as wide as 900 metres and hovered over a church, dense housing, a busy mall and several small businesses and eateries. A public school is about 500 metres away. 

Born and raised near the Golden Mile, Krissan Veerasingam had no idea a factory releasing ethylene oxide was so close to home. “There’s a reason why a lot of immigrants came here, because there are so much industry and factory jobs available,” said Veerasingam, a co-founder of the Scarborough Environmental Association. 

Veerasingam’s parents immigrated from Sri Lanka and his father once worked in a Scarborough plastics factory. He said it’s important that entry-level jobs exist for newcomers. “But on the other hand, [Scarborough] being a densely populated suburb, heavy regulation is required to make sure that the air we are breathing is not going to impact the wider community and the workers who work there,” Veerasingam said.  

“People just like my dad [are] working there … they put a lot of trust in the people employing them.”

Why we dug into Sterigenics and its use of carcinogens

In 2022, Sterigenics closed its Scarborough location to relocate to the other side of the region, moving into an almost 28,000-square-foot facility in Mississauga. The company reported ethylene oxide emissions from the new facility to the federal government in 2022, the last year for which data is available. It is unclear why it moved; as of writing, the location is not listed on the company’s online map of its 48 sterilization facilities in 13 countries, including China, Brazil and the United States, as well as two other Canadian factories, one in Port Coquitlam outside Vancouver and the other in Laval, Que. The map notes various technologies used at each plant, but not ethylene oxide: for months, a note at the top has said, “This page is under construction. Please come back …” for that information. 

The Mississauga facility is in a less residential area than Sterigenics’ old Scarborough location. Its closest neighbours are mostly industrial facilities on a major trucking route along Ambassador Drive. But snaking through these factories are clusters of community gathering spots.  

American researchers have used a radius of five miles, or about eight kilometres, to measure the population exposed to ethylene oxide from nearby factories. In Mississauga, that encompasses restaurants, community centres, schools and a Kids and Company daycare — the director said they had never heard of the company — as well as the Paramount Fine Foods Centre, an entertainment arena with a capacity of 5,000.

Kamal Syed, a volunteer at Jame Masjid, was one of many Mississauga residents who said they had no idea that a Sterigenics plant was operating in their community.

Two mosques also lie in the circle: Sayeda Khadija, a five-minute drive away from Sterigenics, and Jame Masjid, four kilometres away. Spokespeople for both said they were unaware of the factory. “We do have small children and families that attend our facility,” Jame Masjid congregation member Kamal Syed said. The mosque sees 2,000 people attend prayers every Friday. “We would definitely be concerned about any toxic emissions.” 

On cold days, smoke and steam can be seen billowing into the air from various facilities. Commuters and workers are used to seeing the horizon of industry, not knowing what each manufactures or emits into the air. Just over two kilometres away from Sterigenics lies an expansive golf course, where a representative voiced concern that a company close by could be emitting ethylene oxide, saying, “People are breathing in the air [when] they golf.”

A Sterigenics spokesperson said by email the company could not provide a tour of the Mississauga facility because of a “commitment to confidentiality and security.” The company did not respond to four phone calls or detailed questions sent two times.  

To understand the state of ethylene oxide emissions in the Greater Toronto Area, The Narwhal and The Local interviewed dozens of residents and local politicians, as well as representatives from various health networks and several ethylene oxide experts across North America. We also reviewed Canadian and American regulations for the chemical, as well as documents relating to American lawsuits involving Sterigenics operations, speaking with multiple lawyers representing alleged victims of ethylene oxide contamination in the U.S. 

Just over two kilometres away from Sterigenics’ Mississauga factory lies an expansive golf course.

We contacted the provincial Environment, Natural Resources and Economic Development ministries, Health Canada and MP Iqwinder Gaheer and MPP Deepak Anand, both in Mississauga. None responded to detailed questions.

We spoke at length with an Environment and Climate Change Canada scientist whose team identified the plumes of ethylene oxide over Scarborough in 2021. We also conducted email interviews with Public Health Ontario and Environment and Climate Change Canada, as well as a number of local politicians. 

In 1999, Environment Canada labelled ethylene oxide “toxic,” recommending “additional investigation of the magnitude of exposure of populations … to assist risk management actions.” In 2003, the federal department issued more warnings, including a risk management strategy with the goal of reducing emissions of ethylene oxide to “lowest achievable levels” to minimize health risks and meet standards “comparable to what is currently in place in other jurisdictions, primarily the United States.” 

It’s not clear what, if anything, the federal government has done since then to regulate ethylene oxide in the air, or to protect workers and other Canadians who are exposed to it. 

Most government departments, politicians, health care providers and researchers referred us to the provincial Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, which is responsible for monitoring pollution. After 14 emails and five phone calls asking what regulations are in place to protect Ontarians from ethylene oxide and if there are plans to study ethylene oxide contamination further, the ministry only said twice via email that it does “not have any input at this time.”

What is ethylene oxide and what is the evidence of its links to cancer?

Ethylene oxide has a versatile history. A century ago, it was used as a “powerful insecticide,” then as a hospital room fumigator, according to the Chicago Tribune. Today, medical sterilization is the number one emitter of ethylene oxide in Canada, used by approximately 120 health care facilities according to CAREX, which studies Canadians’ exposures to known and suspected carcinogens.

Smaller amounts of ethylene oxide are used as disinfectants, fumigants or insecticides, and in products like antifreeze. It’s also used globally by the spice industry to reduce microbial contamination like E. coli and salmonella. Health Canada removed ethylene oxide from its list of permitted food additives in 2017 but did not respond to questions about exactly what that means.

While the chemical is useful, and in use, its dangerous properties are not news: in 1981, a Shell Oil executive wrote after a conference on industrial carcinogens that “the biggest problem that we have right now is ethylene oxide.” 

In its risk management strategy, Environment Canada said cancer is the main impact of ethylene oxide on human health and that the chemical could be harmful at any level of exposure. The U.S. National Toxicology Program has listed ethylene oxide as “known to be a human carcinogen” since 2000, and in 2021 stated that lymphoma and leukemia are the cancers most often associated with exposure. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety points to organ toxicity, reproductive toxicity and germ cell mutagenicity as possible effects of exposure, meaning there’s the potential for unborn children to be affected, too. The centre also said long-term chronic exposure to ethylene oxide can harm the nervous system and cause asthma. 

The population in the area around the Sterigenics plant in Mississauga is made up of 58 per cent immigrants. In 2021, 78,155 people lived in the municipal ward where the factory is located.

Researchers are concerned with emissions, or what is coming out of factories, as well as ambient air, or the air we breathe. There are currently no enforceable federal regulations around ethylene oxide levels for either.

Canada does have reporting requirements: facilities that release certain chemicals, including ethylene oxide, at certain volumes are obligated to report emissions to the National Pollutant Release Inventory. Sterigenics is one of two Ontario companies that does so for ethylene oxide, with its first entry logged in 2004, in Scarborough. 

In 2005, Environment Canada also released guidelines to encourage sterilizers to reduce ethylene oxide emissions: they state that owners and operators of facilities that buy or use 10 kilograms or more of the chemical annually should maintain control of 99 per cent of emissions, or ensure the concentration of the chemical released to the atmosphere remains below one part per million. The federal department also said Ontario has its own health-based guidelines regarding ethylene oxide emissions. 

But guidelines are not enforceable regulations. And it doesn’t seem like anyone is proactively checking whether they’re being met. Fe de Leon, a researcher and paralegal at the Canadian Environmental Law Association and a member of the National Pollutant Release Inventory working group, said “the only way that we’ve seen that quality control happen at the facility level, is if somebody points out that there’s an error … And unless somebody points it out, it doesn’t get captured.”

“It needs to be scrutinized more,” de Leon added about the inventory.

Federal government researchers used a mobile air-sampling laboratory, housed in a van, to measure ambient ethylene oxide levels in Toronto and surrounding areas in 2021. Grey values were below the limit of detection. The inset shows the area around the now-closed Sterigenics plant, marked with a purple triangle, where the highest levels were recorded. Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada / Atmospheric Environment. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

What Environment Canada researchers testing for ethylene oxide found around a Sterigenics plant in Scarborough

Elisabeth Galarneau, an air quality researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada, was the lead scientist on a team studying ethylene oxide emissions in late 2021.

Her team partnered with an American company to do the study, attaching equipment to a Ford F-650 truck modified to be a mobile laboratory. Driving around Toronto to monitor ethylene oxide in urban air, the team recorded levels near known emitters like health care facilities. 

Galarneau said that when her team drove near Sterigenics, ethylene oxide contamination was immediately notable — with “detectable plumes” hovering over the neighbourhood.

“We did this strategy of going back four times … there were times we drove around the facility on days where the winds were [coming] from different directions and the pattern that we saw, of where we saw the ethylene oxide, was exactly consistent with that particular facility being the source, either that facility or something else that is near that facility,” Galarneau said. 

Environment Canada’s ethylene oxide study shows that at one point, concentrations in the vicinity of the Scarborough, Ont., plant got as high as 18 parts per billion — higher than the maximum concentration observed at the Willowbrook, Ill., Sterigenics facility, which was 12 parts per billion.

Over a period of three days, Galarneau’s study found average ethylene oxide concentrations of 0.43 parts per billion in the air in the vicinity of Scarborough’s now-closed Sterigenics plant. This suggests emissions may have pushed ethylene oxide levels in ambient air above Ontario’s health-based guideline: while her team’s longest study period was just 37 minutes, the guideline recommends no more than 0.11 parts per billion measured over a 24-hour period and 0.022 parts per billion measured on an annual basis.

“The Sterigenics facility was by far the highest concentration that we measured,” Galarneau said. Her study showed there was more ethylene oxide in the air around Sterigenics’ fence than anywhere else she observed in Toronto.

Sterigenics did not respond to detailed questions about emissions reductions measures in Scarborough or Mississauga, its procedures to protect workers or the potentially harmful effects of ethylene oxide.

The former Sterigenics plant in Scarborough, outlined on the left, is 500 metres away from the closest public school, outlined on the right. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

On its website, Sterigenics maintains, “No generally accepted science demonstrates that low-level [ethylene oxide] exposure from Sterigenics’ facilities cause medical conditions. [Ethylene oxide] is a naturally occurring substance, unlike many other chemicals at issue in other environmental litigation. [Ethylene oxide] consistently occurs in the environment from natural/everyday human activity, often at levels above those to which the general public is exposed to long-term from the Sterigenics facilities.”

While it is true that ethylene oxide is produced naturally, emissions due to natural sources such as waterlogged soil are “expected to be negligible,” according to an assessment report explaining its designation under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. 

The act lists ethylene oxide as a schedule one chemical, meaning definitely and highly toxic. Yet, according to de Leon, “there’s not a lot of specific regulation” at either the federal or provincial level. 

Provinces are responsible for overseeing emissions and monitoring compliance of industries that emit pollutants, although the federal government does set guidelines and make recommendations.  Business owners in Ontario that “plan to carry out activities that have the potential to impact the public or natural environment” are required to get an environmental compliance approval, which has a public comment period built into the process. Exemptions are made for businesses with “less complex operations,” which are required to register under the Environmental Activity and Sector Registry.

The City of Mississauga told us Sterigenics does not have a provincial compliance approval. Instead, the company’s past and present locations are listed on the environmental registry. The registry option, de Leon says, is available in order to “reduce the burden on industry who wanted to operate in Ontario” and is designed to “demonstrate that these types of facilities have a lesser harm to the environment in terms of their releases.” A registry listing does not require a public comment period. 

In recent years, Sterigenics has reported a decrease in its emissions on the national inventory. In 2019, the company reported 0.88 tonnes of ethylene oxide. In 2020 that number was down to 0.19 tonnes. That year, Sterigenics noted in a comment on its “pollution prevention” activities that it had “Routed exhaust from one emissions source to an emissions control device. This change reduced emissions released to the environment.”

De Leon said that doesn’t reassure her fully, especially given the lack of regulations and monitoring

“If you look at the data that’s associated with ethylene oxide … the levels of impact are still happening at the lowest level. Particularly for workers, the best level is zero. Any level is harmful exposure,” de Leon said.

Last year, the company told the National Observer its new Mississauga location is equipped with a “state-of-the-art emissions control system” that can capture “99.9 per cent of total ethylene oxide emissions.” 

In 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, 70-year-old Sue Kamuda was awarded US$363 million after alleging a Sterigenics facility exposed Willowbrook, Ill., residents to ethylene oxide gas, giving her cancer. Photo: Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Chicago Sun-Times via AP

Sterigenics has agreed to pay out nearly half a billion dollars to Americans claiming harm because of its operations 

In 2019, Sterigenics’ shut down its plant in Willowbrook, Ill., which is called its most “infamous facility” by lawyers representing clients suing the company. The outrage began after a study by the Illinois Department of Public Health found the number of Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases in women living near the facility between 1995 and 2015 was 90 per cent higher than expected.

Concerned citizens formed the group Stop Sterigenics in response to the report, and protests and public outreach led to an order by the Illinois’ attorney general for Sterigenics to cease operating in February 2019. According to the Chicago Tribune, average levels of ethylene oxide at the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 monitors plummeted in the six days after the shutdown: they were at least 50 per cent lower at all monitors and more than 90 per cent lower at the testing locations closest to Sterigenics. By March, Illinois Public Health had published its findings in a definitive final report, and by September, Sterigenics announced it would be discontinuing operations in Willowbrook.

Then came the lawsuits: in Illinois alone, 879 of 882 claimants eligible to participate in a US$408 million settlement program have opted in. That leaves three open cases as of late 2023. In a press release last summer, Sterigenics maintained its Willowbrook operations did not “pose a safety risk to the surrounding community” and said settlements are not to be “construed as an admission of liability.” 

The press release continued: “As we have done throughout our history, we will continue to operate all our facilities in compliance with applicable rules and regulations and best industry practices …” Sterigenics did not respond to detailed questions about its operations or legal issues in the U.S. 

“There was a lot of anger, resentment and sadness that enveloped the whole community,” microbiologist Urszula Tanouye told us.

In Mississauga, there are community centres, schools, a daycare, an entertainment arena and two mosques near a Sterigenics factory that opened in 2022.

A Stop Sterigenics leader, Tanouye grew up in the Willowbrook area. She helped organize demonstrations, including an “empty stroller protest” to symbolize the children the community says it lost to cancer and miscarriages. She said the 9,000-person town of Willowbrook is still in “recovery” from an ordeal that allegedly left hundreds with cancer and many more — including Tanouye’s children — with pervasive respiratory issues they believe are linked to ethylene oxide exposure.

Continuously hearing about other neighbourhoods near Sterigenics facilities, Tanouye said, is like a “bad dream.” Calling herself a “reluctant activist,” she said the advice she offers other communities is, “You’re not crazy.”

“Those reports are real, and the industry is trying to paint a picture because it is in their best interest to downplay the effect the chemical is causing,” she said.

Illinois attorney Antonio Romanucci, the co-lead counsel representing more than 300 plaintiffs, told us generations have been impacted by Sterigenics’ ethylene oxide emissions in Willowbrook.

“I think one of the more egregious findings that we saw is how many children were affected by the effects of ethylene oxide,” Romanucci said. “And that’s because they were emitting ethylene oxide within hundreds of yards [of schools].” 

Romanucci and his clients say the impact in Willowbrook was merciless, resulting in life-changing and even terminal illnesses for hundreds of people who lived and worked near the facility. 

“Among our plaintiffs we saw countless cases of breast cancer, blood cancers and other health conditions — and behind each of those cases is a person who was scared, suffered through pain and procedures and whose life was never the same again,” Romanucci said.

“Everywhere this chemical is, there’s a cloud of death. There’s a cloud of sickness,” Georgia attorney Michael Geoffroy told us. He’s also representing several plaintiffs who say ethylene oxide from Sterigenics’ facilities harmed their families. “It has affected entire streets. When we plot the locations of some of the victims and some of the cancer survivors, they often live right next door to each other.”

He added it’s unusual to find clusters of such rare types of cancers, pointing to three mothers, all with children in the same classroom, whom he says got breast cancer at the same time. “We owe it to our children to have a clean environment where you can breathe the air and not worry about getting cancer.”

No level of government seems to have informed residents near Sterigenics’ old plant in Scarborough about an Environment and Climate Change Canada report that detected high levels of ethylene oxide in the air in 2021.

In October 2023, Sterigenics announced it would pay US$35 million to families who lived around its Georgia facility. In a press release, the company said the “settlement explicitly does not constitute an admission of liability or that emissions from its Atlanta facility have ever posed any type of safety hazard to the surrounding communities.”

The New Mexico attorney general has also filed a lawsuit against the company: while a court dismissed some of its claims last August, claims of public nuisance and negligence still stand, and the state was instructed to amend its complaint.

The Local and The Narwhal reviewed publicly available notes and summaries on the American lawsuits. We asked lawyers in Illinois and Georgia to share documentation about the health conditions of clients that had lived close to Sterigenics facilities. All declined, citing privacy concerns. 

In February 2023, the Union of Concerned Scientists mapped 104 facilities that use and release ethylene oxide across the U.S., a project it began in 2018 at the request of the Illinois government. The majority are commercial sterilizers like Sterigenics. The group found seven Sterigenics locations currently operating in the U.S., estimating roughly 14.2 million people live within a five-mile radius of an ethylene oxide-emitting facility in the U.S., many of whom are racialized, low-income individuals.

“The very product used to sterilize critical medical equipment also endangers people who live, work or attend school near these facilities,” the report reads, explaining that multiple commercial sterilizers are often located in densely populated communities near each other in “sterilizer hotspots.” 

The report showed many people were unaware they live near a facility that emits ethylene oxide: “Unlike chemical plants or refineries, commercial sterilizers may look like warehouses or large office buildings and be situated in or near residential areas. Often, they do not have large smokestacks or appear to be sites of major industrial activity.” 

In 2020, ABC 7 Chicago reported Sterigenics was accused of funneling US$1.3 billion to investors over three years to avoid paying plaintiffs in the event of a successful lawsuit. At the time, the company told ABC it regularly takes actions to “maintain and enhance … financial strength for the benefit of all stakeholders,” adding that, “Assertions that the companies took actions with respect to capital structure in response to ongoing litigation are false.” It currently has an entire web page dedicated to answering investors’ questions about “environmental exposure litigation.”

Sterigenics’ current Mississauga location is in a largely industrial corridor, but the area around it is a busy commuters’ hub.

The Ontario communities around Sterigenics plants, past and present

In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released long-awaited regulatory guidelines for ethylene oxide emissions. Advocates say there are many gaps in these guidelines, but they are still ahead of what Canada has at the moment. Health Canada is still just planning to release a report on ethylene oxide in the coming year, which experts like Galarneau are waiting for to determine the course of further testing and funding.

Her team’s findings indicate a potentially significant threat to public health may have existed in Scarborough. At one point during the Environment Canada study period, ethylene oxide concentrations in the vicinity of the plant got as high as 18 parts per billion — higher than the maximum concentration observed at the Willowbrook Sterigenics facility, which was 12 parts per billion.

Unlike in Illinois and other American locations, where high local cancer rates put Sterigenics’ operations under scrutiny, geographic cancer data for specific postal codes is essentially impossible for the public to access in Ontario. Local health networks and Cancer Care Ontario were not able to provide this information. A director of data quality at ICES, a non-profit research institute funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Health that collects provincial health data, said the organization is barred by the provincial Personal Health Information Act from sharing regional cancer data, even anonymized. 

Meanwhile, no level of government seems to have informed the public of the Environment Canada report, or of Sterigenics’ presence in Ontario. 

In Scarborough, both MPP Doly Begum, who has represented the Scarborough Southwest riding for six years, and newly minted Toronto Coun. Parthi Kandavel said they had not heard of Sterigenics. “I can fairly say that the communities are likely very much unaware of [the factory],” Kandavel said. 

A mother whose children were students at this school when the Scarborough Sterigenics plant was operating nearby said she wondered if Environment Canada “would ever have informed us that our children were breathing in this carcinogen.”

Resident Catharine Heddle only learned about the closed Sterigenics plant and Environment Canada’s ethylene oxide study when The Narwhal and The Local told her about both. She said she is “extremely alarmed” for her two children: now ages 18 and 20, they both attended the elementary school closest to the former Scarborough plant’s site. 

“I was disappointed to be hearing about it from the news media, rather than from Environment Canada,” she said. “I expected that they would let people know the moment they discovered this danger. And it made me wonder if they would ever have informed us that our children were breathing in this carcinogen.” 

In Mississauga, a media relations person said the city was aware Sterigenics had moved there. The office of Coun. Joe Horneck, who was Mississauga’s acting mayor in February, said via email that Mississauga has “narrow jurisdiction and authority over environmental compliance of manufacturing companies.” Horneck’s office, other city councillors, federal government researchers and Peel Public Health all noted that the provincial Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks is responsible for monitoring air emissions. 

Mississauga is vastly different from Willowbrook, a town that is over 75 per cent white, with a median income of US$92,202. In contrast, over 60 per cent of Mississauga residents identify as “visible minorities,” Statistics Canada’s term for people who are neither white nor Indigenous, and the median household income of the area around Sterigenics’ plant in 2020 was $84,000. 

Darya Minovi, a primary author of the Union of Concerned Scientists report, said she found an interesting “social dimension” in the data, which showed most commercial sterilizers were located in low-income and racialized communities. 

“We would definitely be concerned about any toxic emissions,” Kamal Syed said about Jame Masjid, where 2,000 people attend prayers every Friday. The mosque is four kilometres away from Sterigenics’ factory in Missisauga.

She said Willowbrook’s ability to “advocate for themselves and have that facility shut down” was in part because it’s “a predominantly white and more affluent, or not unnecessarily low-income, community,” a sentiment echoed by Stop Sterigenics organizer Tanouye. The environmental researcher believes the use of ethylene oxide in Willowbrook sparked more outrage because of the community’s demographics. 

“Our analysis confirmed and found that people of colour especially are disproportionately in close proximity to these facilities,” Minovi said. The only other Ontario company that reported ethylene oxide on the National Pollutant Release Inventory was also in Mississauga: the waste management operation Clean Harbors. That company said via email that its Mississauga plant is shut and it had “no history of manufacturing or managing ethylene oxide at that site,” although it reported ethylene oxide disposals and transfers from 2020 to 2022. 

Long considered a bedroom suburb for workers commuting to Toronto, Mississauga has in recent years been redefining itself as a city, one that continues to grow and evolve in its diversity.  The area around Sterigenics’ operating plant is made up of 58 per cent immigrants, and has no small number of people: in 2021, 78,155 people lived in the municipal ward where the factory is located. 

That includes many of the 2,000 people who attend services at Syed’s mosque, Jame Masjid, minutes away from the Sterigenics factory.

“As soon as [this matter] becomes public knowledge, it’s going to create a really big uproar in the community,” Syed said.

Updated May 3, 2024, at 12:59 p.m. ET: This article was updated to correct a reference to pollution reported by Clean Harbors. The company reported ethylene oxide disposals and transfers, and not air emissions as a previous version of this report incorrectly stated.

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Urban areas throughout the world are plagued by the issue of air pollution. Cars, home heating, fires and industry send a toxic slew of chemicals into the air to mix, mingle and enter our bodies. 

Edmonton is no different, including the industrial fringe on its eastern edge. 

Snug between Edmonton and Sherwood Park — in a region with a population of around one million people — the industrial area houses everything from an aluminum facility to refineries, all of which pump their own emissions to an airshed that sometimes ranks worse than much larger cities. 

The reasons are many. The combination of sources, the direction of the wind and the way it sometimes gets trapped over the city in the winter. The refineries, one owned by Imperial Oil and the other by Suncor, are small contributors in the overall picture, but they do pump out a daunting list of chemicals known to cause harm to humans — from benzene to sulphur dioxide. 

What is rarely known is how often and in what doses those substances are released, and just what that means for those living nearby. Emissions monitoring in the immediate area is mostly handled by industry and it only continuously monitors a handful of substances. In the rest of the Edmonton area, monitoring is done by a non-profit called the Alberta Capital Airshed.

Industry compiles and submits more detailed inventories of the pollutants they release to both the provincial and federal governments, however, these inventories are estimates averaged over the course of a year.

Even with those estimates, the science behind health impacts from the combination of particles and pollutants in the air is largely unknown, according to Dr. Alvaro Osornio-Vargas, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Alberta who studies the health impacts of air pollution. But he has no doubt air pollution is harmful to human health. 

“So the conclusion is, yes, industry is releasing toxicants that could impact the health of the neighbours. That would be the short answer,” he says. 

“The [issue] is we don’t have solid evidence. The reason behind that is because we don’t monitor all the chemicals emitted by industry — not in Canada, nor around the world. So we rely on information that industry provides to government.”

The known knowns and the known unknowns of refineries

The information from industry appears robust, breaking down how many tonnes of dozens of substances are released by specific facilities over the years. But the sheer volume of numbers masks the reality that it provides little in the way of clarity.

“They say in this last year, we emitted this many tonnes of benzene coming specifically out of these refineries. But again, it’s an estimate,” says Osornio-Vargas. “And when you say we put it out there through the year, we don’t know if they put out more in the winter, or in the summer, or night or in the middle of the day.” 

A stack from the Imperial Oil refinery near Edmonton juts into the sky. Pollutants from refinery stacks can travel long distances, mixing with other substances in the air.

He says that lack of detail means his research into things like asthma rates among children and the impact of industrial emissions lacks certainty. 

“That’s why I am hesitant to say, yes, industry is causing health problems in the population,” he says. 

Isolating the impacts of industry, or one industry, on the overall health of nearby residents is difficult despite the harmful effects of chemicals like benzene — a known carcinogen — or fine particulate matter — a mix of toxic materials that can find their way into lungs and cause breathing difficulties.

Distance plays a role in exposures, so too do the cumulative effects of pollution.

Dr. Elaine MacDonald, program director of healthy communities with Ecojustice, says the way volatile organic compounds — gases emitted from solids and liquids in places like refineries — are released, changes how they ultimately settle. Emissions from sources closer to the ground can “easily” be found within a kilometre of a refinery, while emissions from stacks that are sent higher into the atmosphere take longer to fall, and have a wider dispersion. Those emissions would also be less concentrated.

Like Osornio-Vargas, she would like to see more detailed information on when there are spikes of emissions.

A full view of the Imperial Oil refinery, with oil rail cars in the foreground. There is no doubt that air pollution is a major health concern, accounting for an estimated 15,300 premature deaths in Canada each year, but quantifying the contribution of specific industry emissions is difficult.

In 2018, a consortium of media outlets, including Global News, the Toronto Star, and National Observer reported on how Canadian refineries were producing substantially more pollution than their counterparts in the United States.

“When you’re talking about pollutants that are respiratory toxins that are going to impact your ability to breathe, it is the short-term exposure that is of concern, it’s not your annual average,” says MacDonald, who analyzed the data comparing emissions from facilities on both sides of the border. “If you’re talking about a carcinogen, then it might be your annual average, because there’s a long latency period to develop cancer and so on.” 

The potential health impacts of air pollution from industry

Osornio-Vargas says it’s important to use the data that is available, even if it’s insufficient, in order to identify gaps and try to identify patterns that could point to a larger problem. He has done multiple studies tracking pollutants and health outcomes.

In one case, he and his colleagues used data on almost 150 different chemicals emitted around Alberta and mapped the emitting facilities. They then examined data on premature births and the births of small babies. 

“If those complexes or those industries are meeting certain combinations of chemicals, the probability of having a small baby or a preterm baby increased by 15 to 20 per cent,” Osornio-Vargas says, but he’s quick to circle back to the limitations of the data and the inability to draw stronger conclusions. 

“I will say there might be some increased risk, but the magnitude of the risk remains to be measured with more precision.”

Imperial Oil’s refinery is located close to homes in both Edmonton and Sherwood Park, but the exact impact of its emissions on human health is difficult to assess.

Roads and homes are in close proximity to the industrial area that houses the two refineries east of Edmonton.

Other health risks are more difficult to link to air pollution. Osornio-Vargas says childhood cancers, for example, aren’t common enough to do a proper study. 

Air pollution has been linked to asthma attacks in those already diagnosed, but a recent study out of Ontario found there could be a link between the onset of asthma and increased exposure to air pollutants in children from chemical factories and refineries in the Sarnia region.

Another recent study out of Edmonton linked exposure to carbon monoxide, particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide with hospitalizations for substance abuse. The paper argues there is growing evidence that exposure to air pollution might affect human behaviour.

Health Canada estimates air pollution contributes to 15,300 premature deaths each year — 1,400 in Alberta alone. It puts the economic cost of all health impacts attributed to air pollution at $120 billion per year.

Those estimates, however, are based exclusively on exposure to fine particulates, nitrogen dioxide and ozone. The agency says that “owing to data limitations and knowledge gaps,” not all impacts from those substances can be quantified. 

Storage tanks at Enbridge’s Edmonton terminal near the refineries, where oil is shipped across North America and diluent, used to dilute Alberta’s heavy crude, is shipped in.

“Further, there are other air contaminants that contribute to air pollution health impacts, but they are beyond the scope of this work,” reads the 2021 report.

Alberta air quality: who is monitoring what?

Specialized air monitoring stations do pick up continuous levels of some contaminants, but that can change depending on the station. Those stations tend to monitor what’s known as criteria air contaminants — particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, ozone and sulphur dioxide — all of which contribute to poor air quality. Some stations monitor additional emissions including carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide and volatile organic compounds, the latter which often leaks from valves and other equipment within facilities. 

The industrial zone between Edmonton and Sherwood Park is the only area in what’s known as the capital airshed that is not actively monitored by the non-profit organization Alberta Capital Airshed, which produces real-time air quality data. One monitoring station is run by the government and four are run by industry. Two industry stations and the government station do provide their data to Alberta Capital Airshed, while two industry stations do not. 

The Imperial Oil refinery looms in the background, just off the North Saskatchewan River that flows through Edmonton.

Across Alberta, the vast majority of monitoring is done by 10 airshed organizations, according to Garry Redmond, the executive director of the Alberta Capital Airshed. He believes it is the best model for the industrial area and would provide more transparent data for the public.

“I would just say that I think that it would be helpful if we had airshed monitoring in the area, that the data was more readily available,” he says. “And I’m looking more at industry when I say that versus government.”

The Strathcona Industrial Association, which conducts live monitoring on behalf of industry in the area, says it provides data on its own website for the substances it monitors. It says the two stations that share data with the airshed organization are the only ones that monitor for ozone — a key measurement for what’s known as the Air Quality Health Index.

“[Strathcona Industrial Association] has a solid vested interest in the local community,” Erica Thomas, executive director of the association, wrote in an email to The Narwhal. “The collective of 12 members hold each other accountable. Furthermore, we continue to be responsible to the regulator, providing monthly and annual reports.”

The office of Jason Nixon, Alberta’s minister of environment and parks, ignored requests for information and emailed questions from The Narwhal.

Imperial Oil did not respond to requests for comment and Suncor said the industrial association was the best organization to answer questions about pollutants and Suncor’s refinery emissions.

The air quality in Edmonton

Data from monitoring stations show the Edmonton area has some of the worst air quality in the province, although most of the yearly averages are well below provincial thresholds, and certain areas of the province rank far worse for some pollutants, particularly around the oilsands. 

Levels of fine particulates and nitrogen dioxide were high in multiple Edmonton locations, according to a 2020 report by Alberta’s airsheds. Spikes of nitrogen oxide were well beyond the Annual Alberta Ambient Air Quality objective at some stations.

Suncor’s Edmonton refinery produces fewer emissions than the Imperial facility, but is still a significant emitter. Monitoring around the two refineries is largely conducted by industry and most substances are not continuously monitored.

Redmond says if they do see spikes in pollution at a continuous monitoring station, they can extrapolate the source using wind speed, direction temperature and relative humidity, but they can’t know for sure.

He says in general, the airshed has seen increases in fine particulates and ozone, but decreases in sulphur dioxide and some downward trends for nitrogen oxides — although it remains a concern. Hydrogen sulphide, he says, goes up and down and is heavily dependent on location.

And while not all of the Edmonton region’s air quality issues can be put at the feet of two refineries on the city’s eastern edge, there’s no doubt those refineries contribute to the mix — with most of the air travelling east over Sherwood Park. 

Data from the Alberta government shows that out of 336 facilities reporting their contributions to air pollution in 2018, the Imperial and Suncor refineries were major contributors. Imperial was the 15th worst emitter of fine particulates, while Suncor was 22nd. In terms of volatile organic compounds, Suncor ranked eighth worst, while Imperial was 19th. Across the whole province, the Imperial refinery was the second biggest emitter of carbon monoxide, and Suncor ranked 24th. 

Suncor’s refinery in Edmonton is just one facility that contributes to Alberta’s overall poor air quality. The province is responsible for an outsized share of pollutants released into the environment, according to the federal government. Refineries are responsible for four per cent of all volatile organic compounds released in Alberta.

The wider picture in Alberta is even worse, with the province contributing to 45 per cent of the total Canadian pollutant releases to air, water and land in 2019, according to the National Pollutant Release Inventory. When it comes to volatile organic compounds, Alberta was responsible for 44 per cent of the national total and refineries accounted for four per cent. 

While emissions dropped for the most part across Canada between 1990 and 2019, they increased significantly in the oil and gas sector in all of the criteria air contaminants except sulphur oxides, such as sulphur dioxide. 

A toxic cocktail for Edmonton’s air quality 

Part of the problem when looking at overall air quality in Edmonton and beyond is the mix of contributing factors. A bad wildfire season will propel Alberta near the front of the pack for bad air in a given year. Wind direction, temperature and more all contribute to the peaks and valleys of pollutants. But so do accidental releases from industry through failures, shutdowns or emergencies.

In the winter, inversions can trap air over the city, contributing to thicker smog. The cold weather means there’s more wood burning and home heating contributing to the toxic mix as well.  

“So that’s a bit of a double whammy,” Redmond says. 

“The triple whammy part is that chemicals can go up and actually have reactions with one another and then they can actually fall down. So we’re seeing, some would say a chemical supercurrent. So definitely high levels of particulate matter with other pollutants involved as well.”

Osornio-Vargas says it’s not well understood how various substances interact in the air and what impact that has on our health. Past research has tended to focus on the impact of one substance, rather than what it means to breath a blend of pollutants.

Even with more robust analysis, researchers like Osornio-Vargas must also contend with new variables that could change the way pollutants behave.

“Air pollution has a direct impact on climate and now we’re creating a monster in which climate is also modifying air pollution for the worse,” he says.

“So we need to start bringing together instead of separating the problems. I think they have a common cause.”

Updated May 3, 2022, at 9:45 a.m. MT: This article was updated to include statements from the Strathcona Industrial Association regarding its air monitoring operations.

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The University of Alberta and TransAlta, a major Alberta utility company and coal producer, struck an agreement for the company to pay the university $54,000 to research the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

When TransAlta published the research — a study entitled Investigation of Fine Particulate Matter Characteristics and Sources in Edmonton, Alberta — on its website last spring the company initially stated it had sponsored the work, co-authored by Warren Kindzierski and fellow University of Alberta professor Aynul Bari.

But that sponsorship disclaimer was abruptly scrubbed from the company’s website.

Documents released to DeSmog Canada through Freedom of Information legislation show TransAlta did indeed enter into a sponsorship agreement with the University of Alberta that provided Kindzierski, as principle investigator, $54,000 to conduct the research.

TransAlta says that although it did provide the funds to the university, the university did not use the funds to support Kindzierski’s research.

“They kept our funds but did not use them towards the study, they redirected them elsewhere,” Stacy Hatcher, spokesperson for TransAlta, told DeSmog Canada.

Hatcher said because TransAlta did provide the funds to the university “we erred on the side of being completely transparent and stating up front that we had paid for it as that had been the offer.”

“It was a mistake on our part not to circle back and correct the news story once we learned the university did not accept the funding,” she added.

The undocumented movement of industry money on university campuses is nothing new.

Private sponsorship agreements, gifts, grants and donations have all been used as ways to financially support research, resulting in what some critics have identified as a problematic purchase of academic credibility by corporations.

In this instance, the question comes down to whether and how private funds are influencing public conversations about coal-fired power generation in Alberta.

Industry-Friendly Study Used to Fight Coal Phase-Out

The study, made available to the public on TransAlta’s site in late 2015, bears the branding of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health and concludes the high number of coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton doesn’t negatively impact the health of local residents.

The research has been used by TransAlta to push for an alternative to the Alberta government’s plan to phase-out coal by 2030 (which is no small feat: Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined).

In its submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to the research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

“You will see that the research shows minimal airshed impacts from operation of coal-fired generation to the west,” the submission read.

The research has also been used by vocal coal advocates, such as Robin Campbell, president of the Canadian Association of Coal, to argue against a coal phase-out.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600 hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations. Since 2006, TransAlta stopped mining operations at two additional coal mines and as a result now purchases coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

TransAlta (burns coal and) paid U of A to conduct a health study (about coal). But there’s no connection, OK? https://t.co/SimArg2eOH #ableg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Corporate Sponsorship Agreements Commonplace

Sponsorship agreements between the University of Alberta and TransAlta are commonplace, Hatcher said: “TransAlta has a relationship with the university, and we have provided non-directed funding in the past for research and academic projects.”

Documents released to DeSmog Canada confirm this, showing TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the university between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements.

However, the retroactive decision to ‘redirect’ the Kindzierski study funds raises questions about transparency and accountability.

The university’s Research Services Office, which appears as a signatory on the TransAlta sponsorship agreement, said it could not provide comment or release information regarding sponsorships.

A woman at the Research Services Office said simply, “We would not release any information to you of any kind” and recommended all inquiries be directed to the principle investigator: Kindzierski.

“No funds were expended [on that study],” Kindzierski told DeSmog Canada. “They were used after the study was done to support a post doctorate RA (research assistant) on other research activities.”

“Are you familiar with soft dollar funded positions? Why don’t you go ahead and learn about that?” Kindzierski said during a phone interview.

‘Soft money’ positions at universities are those funded by grants, awards and other forms of sponsorship that are usually impermanent and must be regularly sought after through application processes. Alternately, ‘hard money’ positions usually refer to tenure-track positions that are funded by tuition, endowments, government funding and philanthropy.

“All faculties, all programs, all departments at all universities have soft dollar funded positions, totally above board and everything,” he added.

Kindzierski said the research, which was published online without going through a full peer-reviewed process, has since been peer-reviewed, accepted and published at three “high-quality impact journals.”

When asked which journals the research appeared in, he responded, “I can name them but I have no desire to give them to you.”

“Go search. That’s good homework for you.”

“You’re no different than a reporter that is too lazy to find this stuff themselves,” Kindzierski said during the interview.

A similar paper by Kindzierski recently appeared in the journal Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed publication, but DeSmog Canada was unable to find the exact study in question published anywhere other than TransAlta’s website.

Documentation released to DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information shows Kindzierski sent TransAlta a proposal of the study before research was undertaken. Records show this proposal was sent to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice president of policy and sustainable development, at TransAlta’s request in May 2015. The sponsorship agreement was signed in July 2015. The contents of the study proposal, sent from Kindzierski to Wharton, were redacted in the released documents.

Coal Pollution Still Dangerous to Health, Physician Says

Critics have called the independence of the study into question, saying TransAlta’s planned sponsorship could have introduced bias in the research questions pursued.

“I think after they published it they realized [there were going to be] a lot of people making a stink that there was a conflict of interest,” Joe Vipond, physician with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), told DeSmog Canada.

“The optics were quite bad as far as bias is concerned in funding the study and that’s why they moved to make the money trail less obvious.”

Vipond is concerned about the way the study has been used to influence public debate about coal-fired power plants.

“It really distorts the conversation,” he said.

“I work in the medical field… and there is so much evidence of how funding and bias impacts conclusions in the scientific literature in health.”

But, he added, the average person isn’t taught to look as critically at this kind of literature as health professionals are.

“I think it’s very hard. People underestimate the power of money.”

He added that working in the medical field also exposes him to evidence that coal pollution affects respiratory health.

The Kindzierski study goes to great lengths to say pollution in the Edmonton airshed isn’t due to coal-fired power plants, Vipond said.

Recently Vipond co-authored a report, Breathing in the Benefits, released by the Pembina Institute, the Asthma Society, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Lung Association, that estimated the phase-out of coal by 2030 in Alberta would avoid approximately 600 premature deaths, 500 emergency room visits, 80,000 asthma episodes, two million days of respiratory difficulty for individuals and nearly $3 billion in health benefits.

A previous report from the same group of organizations, A Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing Coal Power with Albertans’ Health, found pollution from coal combustion affects respiratory and cardiovascular health as well as the central nervous system. The report says exposure to these pollutants can result in chronic respiratory illness and premature death.

“There is such a broad mix of emissions that come from coal: SOx, NOx, particulate matter 2.5 and mercury,” Vipond said.

“Then there’s a whole host of others like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. That mix comes out of the stack and there is a lot of evidence for how [those pollutants] pollute lungs and the evidence on the impacts to cardiovascular health is even better.”

Particulate matter 2.5 is so fine, Vipond said, it gets into your lungs and can dissolve immediately into the bloodstream.

Andrew Read, environmental policy analyst with the Pembina Institute and contributor to the Breathing in the Benefits report, told DeSmog Canada there are no safe levels of particulate matter 2.5.

“Particulate matter doesn’t have a lower threshold where health impacts aren’t identified,” he said. “There is no argument that burning coal for electricity does not have substantial health impacts.”

Read added that reality should influence how we think about the future of coal-fired power.

Source: Pembina Institute

“The fact that there is no safe level of exposure to pollutants that are emitted by coal electricity is really important to consider,” he said. “If we expect to grow the economy and add industry to the province we have to remove some of these sources of emissions.”

The Kindzierski study produced for TransAlta “was really a political piece,” Read said.

“That’s the main frustration with the Kindzierski study — he could have added to the conversation or contributed in a way that added to the discussion but didn’t.”

Vipond said a presentation by Kindzierski to the Air and Waste Management Association found the short-term presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere resulted in fewer hospital visits for heart attacks.

“The conclusion was breathing coal-fired pollution is good for your health,” Vipond said.

“My feeling on the matter is that people who already have an agenda then go to find evidence that goes to back up that agenda. I think that’s true of humanity: it’s what we do.”

Vipond published a rebuttal of the Kindzierski study, saying there were major flaws in the methodology, including using limited air quality inputs and wind pattern information.

“I was annoyed [Kindzierski’s study] was out there and annoyed no one was challenging it.”

Research Shows Industry Funding Influences Academic Research

While industry funding doesn’t necessarily influence scientific research, a broad survey of research shows that it often does, according to Garry Gray, assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

“If we just look at the outcomes [of research] — and that’s where we should focus — if we look at meta-analyses of funding, we see this in many areas over and over again, the source of funding does matter,” Gray told DeSmog Canada.

Gray spent three years as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard’s Law School studying unethical behaviour in public interest institutions and conducting interviews with researchers in the field of public health and medicine.

His research (which he presents cogently in this TEDx talk) found that, yes, where research money comes from does indeed influence research outcomes.

“There is definitely a funding effect bias that takes place in research, especially when you can show where the funding sources are coming from.”

Gray’s research found that in often minor and subtle ways, researchers found ways to make their findings palatable to their funders.

“It doesn’t mean people were doing unethical research,” Gray said, “it means they were maybe framing their questions in certain ways or asking question A and not question B.”

Gray added universities are trying to better manage the problem of conflict of interest funding, but said they stop short of actually eliminating those funding relationships.

“I think there are a lot of problems today around research funding relationships,” he said.

Many of those ethical problems are not fully resolved by simply asking researchers to sign conflict of interest disclosure forms, he added.

There is often little transparency in how universities accept funding, Gray said, adding that can complicate the issue of public trust.

“Trust is definitely at stake,” he said. “There is this idea that universities are independent and this idea they are, for the most part, serving the public good. So there is this more implicit trust that we have for a project that comes out of the university.”

Yet with increasing amounts of private funds on university campuses, researchers may not be asking “the tougher questions” that are likely to benefit the general public.

“The question is, if we continue to shift funding models, who is going to ask those questions that are not going to be of interest to companies and industry and those types of funders?”

Laurie Adkin, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of political science, told DeSmog Canada there are a lot of concerns about universities’ increasing reliance on corporate funds.

“It has been rather difficult to document the amount of corporate funding for individual researchers and their projects,” Adkins, who is a researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, said.

“Partly because that information isn’t published anywhere and partly because it is difficult to record unless there is some sort of public announcement made.”

A request for comment from Samantha Pearson, director of corporate and foundation relations at the University of Alberta, went unanswered.

As a part of her research Adkin maps funding of energy-related research at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.

There is a significant amount of funding from the fossil fuel industry but also from the federal government at the University of Alberta, Adkin said, adding “a lot of that funding has been going into social licence research or prolonging the life of fossil fuels rather than going into renewable energies.”

“Of course in Alberta the University of Alberta has, at least under its previous president, billed itself as a flagship university for fossil fuel research,” she said.

The University of Alberta used to report industry funding but has since merged that category with funding from public institutions in its annual reporting, so there is no easy way to decipher where funding is coming from.

“You don’t know what faculty is getting what share or what research is getting funded,” she said.

Adkin said the question of the appropriateness of this practice is never raised.

“This is viewed as the model for what everyone should be doing.”

University of Alberta TransAlta Sponsorship Agreement for Kindzierski Coal Study FOI 2016 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Update: This piece was updated Thursday, November 10 at 11:46 a.m. to reflect TransAlta’s use of Kindzierski’s research to push for an alternative to Alberta’s Climate Change Plan, not to explicitly argue against the coal phase-out.

With files from Michael Fisher. 

Image: Emissions from a coal-fired power plant chimney in Germany. Photo: Patrick via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.