Environment

Last summer, Vancouver’s chief medical health officer,
Dr. John Blatherwick, produced a controversial report in
which he suggested that although toxic compounds such
as PCBs are dangerous, they pose no proven long-term
health risk to humans and that funds earmarked for
extensive PCB clean-up would be better spent on social
needs. The Committee of Progressive Electors,

Dr. John Blatherwick:

o set the stage, since
it is our report that
is being discussed:

The opening para-
graph says that:
“The present con-
cern for environmen-
tal protection is
‘healthy’ and legiti-
mate. Environmental protection warrants
the extensive expenditures from govern-
ments and the public. It is essential that
these efforts be effective and well man-
aged.”

Part of the reasons for writing the report
came about because of our. involvement
with the Expo site. Originally, when we
were called to the meeting with the corpora-
tions to look at the Expo site, we made a
couple of very specific statements to them.

Number 1: You had to do testing.
Number 2: You must make all the results of
the testing to date public and you must
make all the results of the future (studies)
public.

And we had a good relationship with
them. The city had to get involved in some
way shape or form. But it would mean that
either the city would have to put in large
amounts of money or the city could say to the province: who was responsible for this site?

And essentially what they did is, they said we want to know what are the standards that
we are going to clean up that site to.

And that standard was: one excess death from cancer per lifetime per million population
is an acceptable risk, recognizing that every time you get into your car you exceed that
degree of acceptable risk.

Now, that committee (which studied health standards) then presented its report to the
cabinet who made it public and presented it to council and said those are the standards.
Then the city’s position was okay, what we want is you to meet those standards.

In general terms we were told that there were sort of three levels of clean up. There was
zero — do nothing. There was a $20-30 million (cost) that they believed would meet the
standards and there was a $200 million plus in which you would completely make this site
free of any dangers whatsoever. But you really wouldn’t be rid of the problem because
somewhere that problem would have to go elsewhere at other enormous costs.

When council had some hearings on it and when we started to listen to some people we
kept hearing that the $20-30 million option was not acceptable to some people, that it can’t
be perfectly safe.

We haven’t gotten across to people the concept of risk management, of acceptable risk.

The longer I have been in public health the more I have been impressed with one very
significant thing. The greatest indicator of poor health is poverty. You can play around with
everything else and look at cardiovascular disease and look at all kinds of environmental
contaminants and that sort of thing and the number one variable is poverty.

And what we were saying in the paper of the difference between the $20 million and the
$200 million is that if we spent that $180 million on something other than removing dirt
from the Expo site, if we spent it on low-rent housing, if we spent it on improving social
security ....

Our paper took on the PCB dioxins issue. We tried to point out is that we have pushed
the panic button on PCBs so much that we now are into a ludicrous situation where we
have PCBs stored in our schools, PCBs stored in our hospitals and we can’t move them.

They’re very carcinogenic on animals, no question about it. That’s been proven over and
over. But we have people working in factories from 1929 on — these are not new
compounds — and they didn’t all come down with cancer and their babies were not
deformed.

So where does this take us? We’ve talked for the last three decades and we’re coming toa
crescendo where this many people will come to a meeting like this and will say something
has to be done. Have you noticed that we have managed to avoid doing anything, though?
We have totally managed to not have a toxic waste disposal site in this province.

And what do we do? We bash each other. We complain. And what we have done is we
have paralyzed our politicians. So that when the minister of the environment comes out
with a report that says we need a provincial disposal site for toxic wastes, people say, yes, we
do, but not in my back yard.

We're going to havea toxic waste clean-up in the city of Vancouver expected to reach one
per cent of the population of Vancouver and most of the cost of that is going to be to ship it
to California.

The point is that somewhere we have to get away from the British Columbian pheno-
menon of the extremes. We’ve got to find some neutral grounds and we’ve got to start
solving the problem, and one of the things we have to start working towards right now is a
proper toxic waste disposal site, proper collection in our own municipalities, proper
transportation systems for these things and then we're really beginning to talk about
something. 3

So let’s not polarize. Let’s not throw rocks at each other. But let’s get on and solve some
problems.

TRIBUNE PHOTOS — DAN KEETON

JOHN BLATHERWICK ... key factor in
poor health is poverty.

DAVID SUZUKI ...

Taking the long-term view on toxins

Vancouver’s labour and community supported civic
alliance, warns that this attitude lets industrial polluters
off the hook. COPE decided to host a public forum on the
issue, and on Nov. 30, Dr. Blatherwick and renowned
scientist and environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki aired
their respective views before a packed house. What
follows are edited versions of their opening remarks.

Dr. David Suzuki:

was very happy
to accept the invita-
tion to come here
tonight, for no other
reason than I wanted
to meet Dr. Bla-
therwick because
I’m quite an admirer
of his. For me, he
has been an extremely courageous and out-
spoken person. And for me, he has always
taken the right position.

I think in a way though that there has
been a false dichotomy created, and that is
between the perceived environmental risks
and the more immediate health hazards
that we face with the need for lights and
traffic crossings. I agree completely with Dr.
Blatherwick that, we need more and better
housing, that we need more education, that
we need more social services and that that
would indeed improve public health.

But I think it is wrong to assume that if
money that was or is demanded for cleaning
up say, PCBs or dioxins or asbestos — if
that money was not given, that money
would necessarily go to the things we would
like to see it go to. The fact is that poverty
-and the people who suffer the ravages of
that are a very low political priority.

Where I do disagree with the submission
that Dr. Blatherwick made was the sugges-
tion that we have to do cost benefit analyses
and that this is the best way to manage the
environmental consequences of many of
our wastes.

~The problem with it is, you look at tech-
nologies at the past, if you look at our
history, the benefits are almost always immediate and obvious, the costs are almost hidden
and unpredictable beforehand. And so in a cost benefit analysis you are really almost
always erring on the wrong side.

our “‘loony tunes”
economy is to blame.

I think the main reason that I wanted to come tonight is really to convince you that we
are desperately in need of a different way of determining our social priorities and the way
we live our lives. And here I may differ somewhat in perspective, but I am sure that the
points I am going to make Dr. Blatherwick would agree with. He looks through the lenses
of a public health officer who really has to live with a city which must commit limited
resources to many different projects and public works. And seen through those lenses there
are immediate matters of public health that are far more urgent than, say, PCBs.

But I look at the issue in a broader sense. I think we have been opting for several decades
now for short term benefits or profit or material comfort and putting off the payment on
the real costs of those benefits that we discover later on. Well now the price is due. We have

- to pay and it is going to cost us far beyond anything than we have ever imagined.

When the fire at Chernobyl broke out, the thing that struck me most powerfully was that
within minutes the Swedes had detected radioisotopes over Sweden. Within hours we had
detected them over the Arctic in Canada. It showed that air does not stop at national
borders. It simply belongs to a single system and circulates around the planet.

And its the same thing as water. Water cartwheels around the planet. Whatever we put
into it is ultimately going to circulate around the planet.

It’s the same thing with the food. If you discard Diet Coke it turns out that every single
thing that you need for your nutrition was once a living plant or animal. And that living
plant or animal depended on clean air, clean water and clean soil for its existence. And as
animals we are tied to a basic fundamental need for clear water, clean air and clean food for
our good health and our survival.

And over the past many decades we have been using the very support system for all life
on earth as a sewer and it seems to me an absolutely stupid thing to do to think that
somehow we can continue to do that without affecting ourselves.

And one of the things I may quibble with (Blatherwick) about is, yes, it has been shown
that PCBs and dioxins don’t appear to be at least at the present time as carcinogenic to
people, but by god if it causes cancer in a rat or some other organism I believe that I am
close enough to that animal to take the greatest precautions going.

Around the world the planet is in fact today dying. This is the thing that came to me so
strongly last spring as I prepared for a radio series called “(It is) A Matter of Survival.”

And that is that we cannot continue to use the environment as a dumping ground for our
waste. And one of the problems we have to face up to in this new perspective is,
fundamentally, economics. But I would suggest that our economy is somehow fundamen-
tally wonky. Not only wonky, it’s loony tunes, it’s nuts.

You know when we.calculate our GNP we don’t even calculate into that the state of the
water, air or soil. It is so perverse, Bill Rees at UBC was telling us that the Exxon Valdez oil
spill — which is the greatest marine disaster in American history — went down as an
economic plus because it contributed several thousand jobs to cleaning up and therefore the
American GNP grew by that much.

So we are really caught in this bind that we can’t get out of until we develop a new kind of
economics.

We must cost products from cradle to grave. And not allow people to manufacture
things that we can just throw out and that’s not a cost in the product.

Pacific Tribune, December 18, 1989 e 13