A small aboriginal village downriver of the Athabasca Tar Sands is calling for a moratorium on any further development.
The Nunee Health Authority at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, claims tar sands developments may be responsible for rare types of cancer in the community, poor water quality and other health issues. From Reuters:
"There is a need for a moratorium on oil sands development," Russell Kaskamin, a councilor with the Mikasew Cree First Nation, said in a statement. "The federal and provincial governments are continuing to issue approvals for projects despite all the uncertainties with the true environmental effects of oil sands developments Last year a doctor in the village reported its population suffered from unusually high rates of rare cancers, thyroid problems and immune-system diseases. His report was contradicted by the Alberta Cancer Board, which found the incidence of cancer to be no higher than the provincial average.
Residents living downstream on the Athabasca fear that pollution in the river and surrounding environment is endangering their health. In Fort MacKay, many of the children live with asthma and other respiratory problems, and anecdotal evidence suggest that abnormally high cancer rates are ravaging families. Recently, a leak at a nearby oil plant forced the hospitalization of several children.
"People are dying of cancer all around us. The industry is all around us…The kids are always sick from the water. The tap water that we use is no good; it has to be boiled," says Yvonne Shott, a lifelong Fort MacKay resident.
...nowhere are the health concerns more evident than in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta's oldest settlement. Fort Chip, as it's called, is located on the scenic northern shores of Lake Athabasca, which the Athabasca River drains into.
The village, which is home to little over a thousand people, has been making headlines recently after the provincial and federal government launched an unprecedented joint investigation to understand what appears to be a cluster of cancer and other lethal diseases including leukemia, lymphoma, lupus, and perhaps most disturbingly, an high occurrence of cholangiocarcinoma—usually an extremely rare cancer affecting the bile duct, which leaves victims with only about a month to live.
2 comments:
My god. This story just sinks into my stomach an awful distaste.
How long have these concerns been known? Was there a study before the oil operations had started which warned of the impact production would have on human lives? Was this even a facility the natives had wanted there?
The problems have been apparent for quite a while. I seem to remember CBC doing a piece on the village a few years back. The Alberta government supposedly did a study some years ago which purported to show the place had normal cancer rates but that report is now hotly contested by the local health authority's own statistics. The actual source of the contamination still isn't known. And yes, several of the natives have managed to get well paid jobs in the tar sands projects so they're of mixed views on what to do. Either way it's essential the Alberta government gets to the bottom of the controversy and does whatever is necessary to protect these people.
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