The issue, already ensconced in American law, has not even begun to register on the Canadian policy agenda.
by Peter D. Carter, MD
Although the last throne speech promised action for Canada’s children and action for Canada’s environment, our government just can’t seem to put the two together.
In 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States announced The US National Agenda to Protect Children’s Health from Environmental Threats, noting that “children are particularly vulnerable to environmental threats.”
During the revision of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) in 1998-99, medical and health associations made submissions on children’s environmental health, citing the new US regulations. These submissions were ignored and the new CEPA makes no mention of children’s health.
As a result, according to media reports, a chemical pesticide restricted in the United States because of the risk it poses to young children is still being used by fruit growers in BC. The US EPA has restricted the use of azinphos-methyl, an insecticide used on a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, in order to reduce the chemical residue on food consumed by children. This new restriction is a result of the 1996 US Food Quality Protection Act, which required the EPA to provide a larger margin of safety when available research on the risks to children is incomplete, as is usually the case with pesticides.
In Canada the responsibility for protecting the health of children from toxic effects rests with the Health Protection Branch (HPB) of Health Canada. As the CEPA revision finished, a HPB Legislative Renewal was announced. At public consultations, a new approach was proposed, an approach focused on child environmental health. Yet when HPB published its summary of the consultations, children’s environmental health was not mentioned.
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How much longer can Canadian policy makers ignore the issue?
This year alone, we have seen a series of reports published in Canada on toxics and the health of children. The most recent is The Health of Canada’s Children: A CICH Profile, 3rd Edition, a 375-page report released by the Canadian Institute of Child Health. The child-health study found a 25 percent increase in childhood cancers in the past 25 years, and noted that children are increasingly at risk of contracting serious diseases from environmental pollution, including nervous system damage. The report warns that “most substances to which children are exposed regularly, such as food additives and pesticides, have not been evaluated for their potential to affect brain development.”
Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment is the May 2000 report of the federal Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. (It can be found at: www.parl.gc.ca/InfocomDoc/36/2/ENVI/Studies/Reports/envi01-e.html)
The committee found that “pesticides are known to play, or are suspected of playing, a role in a myriad of diseases and developmental abnormalities, including cancer (brain, breast, stomach, prostate and testicles), childhood leukemia, reduced
fertility, damage to the thyroid and pituitary glands, lowered immunity, developmental abnormalities, and behavioural problems.”
The Committee reported that “the testimony and the scientific literature have led Committee members to the conclusion that children are the most vulnerable group affected by pesticides. However, there appear to be no research programs focusing on this specific group in Canada. For example, there is no child or fetus pollution indicator system which would make it possible to gather data on concentrations of pollutants found in children’s bodies.”
The Committee heard evidence from the US National Resources Defence Council that 55 percent of cancer risk during a person’s lifetime comes from “exposure to carcinogenic pesticides in food before the age of six.”‘ The Committee advocated regulations to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides, in order to protect children.
The all-party Standing Committee recommends measures “to make the protection of human health and the environment the absolute priority in pest management decisions, especially the protection of children and other vulnerable populations.” For example, they recommend that “what constitutes an unacceptable risk should be based on child health criteria.” To provide extra protection for humans, wildlife and the environment, the Committee wants the precautionary principle embedded in both the preamble and the administrative part of a new law on pesticides.
The pesticide industry supports the status quo on regulations in Canada. A pesticide must be irrefutably linked to disease or harm before Health Canada can act to stop its use. Medical experts in Canada have complained for years about the HPB policy which considers a substance safe if there is no research to say otherwise, even when the research is clearly insufficient.
Environmental Standard Setting and Children’s Health, a combined effort of the Canadian Environmental Law Association and the Ontario College of Family Physicians, studied the risks to children’s health from environmental contaminants and the adequacy of regulatory responses. Their 400-page report, released in May, 2000, found that both federal and provincial governments are not proactive enough in establishing environmental standards that protect children. It says children are more vulnerable to toxic chemicals, hence protecting their health means updating pollution standards–and the method of setting the standards–by putting children’s health first. The report concludes that the status quo is harmful to children and makes 62 recommendations for policy change.
Research in other parts of the world confirms Canadian concerns. A draft report issued by the EPA in the States has confirmed that dioxin is a carcinogen and that “the risks to people may be somewhat higher than previously believed.” A Swedish study has reported an association between nonhodgkins lymphoma and the glyphosphate herbicide Roundup. The study has been criticized by the pesticide industry as not statistically reliable, but with the biotech industry promoting Roundup-ready seeds, the case for caution and adequate research is greater than ever.
Researchers have found and measured pesticides in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women in Los Angeles. “Of the various health problems associated with these chemicals, developmental abnormalities of the male reproductive tract, suppression of immune function, development of the brain and neurobehavioral problems in children are of major concern because they are potentially avoidable and irreversible,” say the researchers.
Consumer’s Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, announced last February that many US fruits and vegetables carry pesticide residues that exceed the limits the EPA considers safe for children. And medical researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison have reported that combinations of low levels of pesticide and chemical ground water contaminants–at levels similar to those found in the ground water of agricultural areas–have measurable detrimental effects on the nervous, immune and endocrine (hormone) systems of mice. They say their research has direct implications for humans.
The US National Agenda to Protect Children’s Health from Environmental Threats included community right-to-know legislation to allow parents to make informed choices concerning environmental exposures to their children. This is surely a natural right for families and children. But in Canada, again we are met with stony silence from policy makers.
What’s holding us up? Health and environmental regulations are seen by the policy makers as obstacles to economic competitiveness. Their inaction suggests Machiavellian compliance to the global free trade princes overrides their responsibility to Canadian children’s environmental health.
This is despite international commitments already made by Canada, in the 1997 Declaration of the Environmental Leaders of the Eight on Children’s Environmental Health, in Chapter 25 of Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, and in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
So far, our policy makers have not had the sense of vision nor ethics to add child health and environmental rights to the free trade NAFTA and WTO rules. Until they do, it’s doubtful we will see a focus on the environmental health of the nation’s children in the new Health Protection Branch legislation and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
* Peter Carter is a family doctor for the Southern Gulf Islands. He has made policy consultation submissions on behalf of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment to Health Canada , Environment Canada, and the Department of International Trade.
Pesticides in the playground
The Canadian EarthCare Society (EarthCare) is concerned about pesticide use and its harmful effects on individuals and the environment.
A report entitled Unthinkable Risk, by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, points out that even though some pesticides are nerve poisons, carcinogens, reproductive toxins, or hormone disruptors, they are used in schools and other public areas.
Children are more at risk because of their size and immaturity. Their brains and nervous systems are not completely developed, and they are unable to detoxify or filter and excrete certain chemicals through their livers and kidneys as quickly as can adults. Their immune systems are not fully developed, and they actually receive higher doses than adults because they are in closer proximity to the applied pesticides in playgrounds. Also, kids receive greater doses than adults because they breathe in a greater volume of air and have larger skin surface areas relative to their smaller body weights.
“School and Parks Boards in every community in BC are applying tons of pesticides, and parents assume these pesticides are being used safely by these public agencies,” says Leonard Fraser, Executive Director of the Canadian EarthCare Society. “This report shows that making those assumptions can be disastrous to children’s health.”
* Download Unthinkable Risk from: www.pesticide.org/UnthinkableRisk.html
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[From WS October/November 2000]
