A health study released today by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Manitoba, is the first of its kind to draw associations between environmental contaminants produced in the oilsands and declines in health in Fort Chipewyan, a native community about 300 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alberta.

The report, Environmental and Human Health Implications of Athabasca Oil Sands, finds health impacts for communities downstream of the Alberta oilsands are “positively associated” with industrial development and the consumption of traditional foods, including locally caught fish.

Dr. Stéphane McLachlan, lead environmental health researcher for the report, said the study’s results “as they relate to human health, are alarming and should function as a wakeup call to industry, government and communities alike.”

Findings include generally high concentrations of carcinogenic PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and heavy metals arsenic, mercury, cadmium and selenium in kidney and liver samples from moose, ducks, muskrats and beavers harvested by community members. A press release for the study says bitumen extraction and upgrading is a major emitter of all of these contaminants.

The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Program has released data about the increases in these contaminants, but fails to address and monitor impacts to First Nations traditional foods,” said Mikisew Cree Chief Steve Courtoreille. “We are greatly alarmed and demand further research and studies are done to expand on the findings of this report.”

The First Nations worked in concert with University of Manitoba scientists, blending “western science and traditional ecological knowledge” to evaluate contaminant levels and potential community exposure, according to the press release.

“This is the first health study that has been conducted in close collaboration with community members of Fort Chipewyan,” McLachlan said in a recent interview.

“The results are grounded in the environment and health sciences, but also in the local traditional knowledge shared by community members. Unlike any of the other studies it has been actively shaped and controlled by both the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree First Nation from the outset.”

The report comes on the heels of the fifth annual ‘healing walk’ in the oilsands region, during which Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said the report would “blow the socks off industry and government.”

Concerns over high rates of rare forms of bile duct, cervical and lung cancers have worried residents of Fort Chipewyan, a small community 300 kilometres downstream of the oilsands, for years.

A government report in March 2014 found elevated rates of the three forms of cancer in Fort Chip, but suggested overall cancer rates fall on par with cancer rates elsewhere in the province. The report’s author, Dr. James Tablot, chief medical officer for Alberta health, said there was little evidence environmental factors played a role in the elevated cancer rates.

The report was treated as largely inconclusive and confirmed the need for further, independent study.

An editorial in the Calgary Herald argued the report confirmed the need to “settle the matter once and for all” and called for an independent study.

“Only then will the nagging fear — whether founded or unfounded — that the Alberta government is too closely linked with the oilsands to provide objective data and conclusions, be put to rest.”

The community of Fort Chip has struggled for years to have a comprehensive, baseline health study conducted.

In March, Chief Adam suggested it was “time for a real study, that is peer reviewed and done in partnership with our communities.” He suggested the government report was conducted to “ease the public response to this and garner more support for approvals of more projects in the region.”

Today researchers and community leaders called for further investigation of contaminant concentrations, as well as community-based monitoring and improved risk communications from government and industry.

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A study has found evidence of rising mercury levels downstream from Northern Alberta’s oil sands extraction plants.

Researchers collected gull and tern eggs from nests in various locations around Alberta over several years. Eggs collected in the Athabasca Lake area, downstream of oil sands' development and refineries, showed much higher levels of mercury than those collected nearer to Calgary.

The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) Program, a partnership between federal and provincial governments, commissioned the peer-reviewed study, but it has yet to appear on their online portal. The Environmental Science and Technology Journal released the study online this September.

A similar study in 2011 by the same authors also found mercury levels in gulls from the Lake Athabasca area showed a 40% increase from 1977 to 2009.

The authors of both studies were reticent to make a direct connection between the eggs' proximity to oil sands operations and increased levels of mercury, saying more study is required to find the exact cause. “We can’t link the mercury levels we’re seeing in these bird eggs specifically to oil sands. Certainly that’s one possibility, but there are other possibilities as well,” author Dr. Hebert told the Globe & Mail. Other possible factors include mercury pollution from coal power plants in Asia.

In 2010, 824 kg of mercury were amongst the toxic materials found in oil sands tailings ponds, according to data from the National Pollutant Release Inventory compiled by the Pembina Institute. Between 2006 and 2010 the amount of mercury added to tailings ponds rose 80 per cent.

In June of this year, Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board found that several oil sands companies weren’t hitting their targets for reducing toxic tailings ponds.

Neither article concludes that wildlife in the area are currently adversely affected by the mercury levels, but if those levels continue to rise, the results could be very serious.

Mercury is a bioaccumulative toxin, meaning it accumulates in the body of an organism for its entire lifespan. Bioaccumulated toxins are also passed up the food chain, leading to higher levels of toxins in more apex predators. Because the Peace-Athabasca Delta is an international staging area for wildlife, the mercury that birds ingest in the region could be spread through food chains all over the world.

Mercury poisoning can have devastating long-term effects on both humans and wildlife. A recent study by Japanese researcher Doctor Masazumi Harada found that two First Nations communities in Ontario that suffered mercury poisoning from nearby pulp and paper mills are still feeling the impacts nearly 50 years later.

Earlier this month, the government of Canada was one of 140 countries to sign the Minamata Treaty, a legally binding international agreement aimed at reducing mercury levels worldwide. Upon signing, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq acknowledged the global nature of the issue in an official statement.

“Signing this treaty reinforces Canada’s commitment to protecting the Arctic ecosystem, the health of our indigenous peoples, Northerners and the global population,” said Aglukkaq, who is also Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council.

Mary Richardson, a spokesperson for the Keepers of the Athabasca, worries that the needs of the oil sands industry will outweigh Canada’s global commitments in this area, just as they did with tailings ponds. “Mercury levels have been going down in Canada for the last forty years and now it appears they’re going up in the tar sands area, which is absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

A professor emeritus in philosophy from the University of Athabasca, Richardson has been involved with environmental groups based in the region for more than 20 years. This year, she was tapped to be part of an environmental non-governmental organization advisory committee for the JOSM, but has only been called to one meeting to date and does not speak on the organization’s behalf.

“This article is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we need to know,” says Richardson. “The eggs were presumably analysed for a lot of other contaminants, but research has not been published for those levels.”

She would like to see numbers for hydrocarbons, arsenic, and other heavy metals, just to name a few of the toxic substances that are related to oil sands extraction.

Still, she is cautiously optimistic about the study, saying that being published in an independent, peer-reviewed journal lends it and the JOSM credibility. “My view is that this article does represent credible science done on the subject,” she says. “The article is careful both in its description of the analysis and in its conclusions.”

Transparency, she believes, is key to the process. “That’s why this program [the JOSM] is important,” she continues. “If in fact the results are open and there’s enough pressure from concerned members of the public, then perhaps something can be done.”

Image Credit: p.Gordon via flickr.

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More than a year after the program's supposed implementation, negotiations over the Alberta-Canada Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) program were still ongoing between the federal government and the Government of Alberta, email correspondence shows.

In documents obtained by the Globe and Mail through the Access to Information Act, it’s clear that the conditions of the program changed throughout the last year. Though details are unclear due to redactions in the released emails, it’s evident that the final deal wasn’t signed until June of this year after significant back and forth and meetings between the Alberta government—who publicly resisted the creation of joint provincial-federal program—and Environment Canada officials.

Bob Hamilton, Environment Canada’s deputy minister, wrote on March 28 of this year, more than a full year after the program was announced, that they “have a green light to move forward with OS [oilsands] monitoring.”

The program was designed to increase monitoring of air, water and habitat quality from annual to monthly, with results available to the public to allow for independent scientific investigation. Full reports were to be issued annually.

After independently appointed panels at both the provincial and federal levels deemed Alberta’s monitoring systems inadequate, the Government of Alberta still balked at the prospect of the federal government implementing a new monitoring system.

The newly released emails indicate continued pushback from Alberta and an unwillingness to face the full extent of the gaps in existing environmental monitoring policy.

One email shows that Alberta’s Deputy Minister of Environment Dana Woodworth believed the province’s existing system left it “well-positioned” to implement a new monitoring regime, in spite of widespread criticism of that system.

The final agreement also states than while the program is intended to undergo a full review in 2015, three years from the time it was announced, either party can cancel the program with six months’ notice.

Given the program's internal disorder, it is unsurprising the first results commissioned by the monitoring program have only just been publicly released.

A study conducted by Environment Canada shows rising levels of mercury in bird eggs tested downstream from the Alberta tar sands. Some samples taken from the eggs of predatory birds showed traces of mercury that exceed the threshold of what’s considered dangerous. The findings indicate mercury levels could be rising in the fish the birds consume. The report was published online last month by the Environmental Science and Technology Journal.

In spite of what the study’s lead author called a trend of rising levels of mercury, spokeswoman for the Alberta government Jessica Potter told First Nations residents of Fort Chipewyan and Fort McKay that the bird eggs were still safe to eat.

“It’s one study. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend. It’s just important that we continue to look into it,” she told the Globe and Mail.

And while the Alberta Government shared the results with those communities and the study was published academically, the results weren't made publicly available on the JOSM Portal website. An agreement signed in June states that all data produced through the program will be publicly accessible via the portal. Although the website lists ongoing testing, many of the results tables state that results will be released in coming months.

Screen shot taken from the JOSM water monitoring page.

Environment Canada researchers said they couldn’t pinpoint the tar sands or any single factor as the cause of mercury increase, though one test revealed that mercury levels had risen two thirds since 1977 and the early days of tar sands' development. Dr. Craig Hebert said coal plants in Asia are a source of elemental gaseous mercury in North America and could possibly be a contributor to the increase.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada's largest oil and gas lobby body and the only non-government body involved in the development of the joint monitoring program, has declined to comment on the results of the latest study.

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