Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 12 - Evidence - February 15, 2007
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:37 a.m. to review the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (1999, c. 33) pursuant to section 343(1) of the said act.
Senator Tommy Banks (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, which has been engaged over the last few months on a statutorily prescribed review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We are examining case studies to find out how well that act is protecting Canadian citizens. The first review was on mercury and we are now looking at PFCs, perfluorinated compounds of various kinds. Appearing before us today are Dr. Joe Schwarcz from McGill University and Dr. Gail Krantzberg from McMaster University.
My name is Tommy Banks. I am a senator from Alberta and the chair of the committee. Our Deputy Chair Senator Cochrane is here from Newfoundland and Labrador, Senator Lorna Milne from Ontario, and Senator David Angus from Quebec.
Gail Krantzberg, Professor and Director, Dofasco Centre for Engineering and Public Policy, McMaster University, as an individual: Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the act and the management of perfluorinated compounds. I will address the use of the precautionary principle in my presentation, as CEPA states. I also want to raise matters of the relevance of government action on persistent organic chemicals in general, nationally and in the Great Lakes Region.
We all know that the world was startled in the spring of 2000, when 3M announced that it would phase out Scotchgard and its thriving $300 million fluorochemical business after researchers discovered a persistent fluorochemical in the blood of humans and animals in areas remote from known sources of use. Perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, a breakdown product of 3M fluorochemicals, turned out to be ubiquitous in the environment.
As the committee is aware, fluorinated organic compounds, such as PFOS, PFOA and PFOSA, are used extensively in the fabrication of plastics, electronics, textiles, leather and upholstery. They are useful compounds. They have also been detected in human blood samples.
Because most perfluorinated compounds are incorporated into polymers, scientists and regulators assumed they would not leach and travel into the environment, nor would they accumulate in living organisms. This assumption proved false. After 3M's voluntary ban on PFOS products, attention turned to another family of currently manufactured compounds with similar uses, the perfluorocarboxylates. Perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, is the best known in this group because it is used to make Teflon, which is found in non-stick frying pans, utensils, stove hoods, stain-proofed carpets, furniture, and clothes. It permeates in this room, actually. Extremely resistant to environmental breakdown, PFOS is a ubiquitous contaminant. Traditional scans for persistent pollutants missed this exposure for a long time because, unlike most POPs, persistent organic compounds, PFOS does not accumulate in fatty tissue, as most POPs do. It accumulates in proteins. It is found in dolphins in Florida, in seals and otters in California, in albatross in the mid-Pacific, and in people worldwide. Their presence in the Arctic in particular is evidence of long- range transport of these persistent substances. Their determination in the tissues of avian species and polar bears is of great concern to subsistence hunters and fishers, including our Aboriginal communities. Should these substances be causing injury to human health, then CEPA, if it does not deal with these compounds, will be failing to protect vulnerable populations like our Aboriginal communities.
Perfluorinated compounds are very persistent. Even if production were to end today, levels would continue to increase in the environment for years to come. Researchers are finding serious health concerns about some perfluorinated compounds, including an increased risk of cancer. This is why I believe using a CCME approach would be completely inappropriate.
In a recently published book edited by Karen Bakker there is a commentary by lawyers Paul Muldoon and Theresa McClenaghan on CCME, and I thought I would read this section to you, although it is not in my testimony.
The Chairman: Ms. Krantzberg, before you go on please explain the acronym CCME.
Ms. Krantzberg: CCME is the acronym for the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. For your viewers, in particular, it is a forum for provincial ministers to meet and concur with the federal government and come up with a common standard for various compounds. Most recently they have come through a long debate on mercury.
Let me quote from Paul Muldoon and Theresa McClenaghan:
Although the CCME does recognize that environmental issues, including water protection and governance cross political boundaries and that a cooperative approach is needed, it cannot provide the robust, innovative and effective approach to water governance issues that Canada needs. Furthermore, its structure (which excludes First Nations governments), its approach (which sees public consultation as peripheral), and the mediocre results of many of its efforts combine to demonstrate that the CCME is not the answer to Canada's water governance crisis.
I could continue but I think that makes the point.
Even in the face of near certain science, the Canada-wide standards for mercury took years to develop and implementation is still lagging. Because of their persistence and health threats associated with many of the fluorinated organic compounds, a more rapid federally-led agenda through federal legislation is in order.
The U.S. EPA is currently investigating the best known of these perfluorinated compounds, PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid. The agency's Science Advisory Board issued a draft PFOA risk assessment in July 2006 recommending that EPA classify the chemical as a likely carcinogen in humans. The recommendation is a significant step that could eventually lead to regulation in the U.S.
PFOA is a likely human carcinogen. It causes liver, pancreatic, testicular and mammary gland tumours in laboratory animals. PFOS causes liver and thyroid cancer in rats. PFCs cause a range of other problems in laboratory animals, as well as liver and kidney damage, and reproductive problems. Importantly, PFOAs half-life in humans, which is the time it would take to expel half of the dose that you have in your body, is estimated at more than four years for PFOA, and for PFOS the half-life is estimated at more than eight years.
EPA summarizes its assessment by observing:
PFOS accumulates to a high degree in animals and humans. It has an estimated half-life of four years in humans. It thus appears to combine persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity properties to an extraordinary degree.
Research is now concentrating on characterizing the mechanisms of PFOS toxicity, identifying the full range of impacts, getting a fuller picture of contamination levels in people and wildlife, and examining related perfluorinated compounds, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the chemical involved in the production of Teflon.
Before environmental concerns appeared, fluorosurfactants relied on perfluorinated carbon fluorinated chains that consisted of eight carbon atoms and 17 fluorine atoms, because this C8-F17 chain length was found to be optimal, according to industry scientists.
Although 3M abandoned C8-F17 chemistry, other manufacturers still make these compounds using the same chemistry, including DuPont, Atofina in France, Clariant in Germany, and Asahi Glass and Daikin in Japan.
To develop environmentally friendly replacements for this halogen-fluorine, the chief strategy is to shorten the C8- F17 chain, because, as you heard last week, chain length has a big impact on bioaccumulation and toxicity. The carbon fluorine bond is so strong that all carbon fluorine chains are likely to persist in the environment, but studies suggest that chain lengths of C8 and longer are more likely to bioaccumulate and to have more potent toxicity. Chains containing four carbon atoms or fewer do not appear to bioaccumulate.
In 2002, the OECD stated that perfluorinated compounds represent a very unique chemistry whose toxicological properties are presently not well understood. Clearly, the presence of different length carbon chains and functional groups are likely to influence toxicity. It is not clear whether the hazard concerns of PFOS can be extrapolated to other perfluorinated compounds except under circumstances where these compounds may degrade to PFOS.
PFOS is persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic to mammalian species. Epidemiological studies have shown an association of PFOS exposure and the incidence of bladder cancer. Further work is needed to understand this association, but the association does exist.
Despite the 2000 withdrawal, Scotchgard is back on the market after reformulation to what the company and EPA say is more environmentally benign fluorine-based chemistry. 3M accomplished this in part by reducing the length of the carbon-fluorine chain so the new compound does not bioaccumulate. There is evidence that surface-treatment residuals, a source of perfluorinated compounds in the home and the environment, are a source of perfluorinated compounds, and that manufacturers should determine methods to remove these residuals.
Further, dismissal of concern for the shorter chains at this point would be a significant gap in the government approach since it is possible that lesser chains be considered as replacements for longer chains, but they may bioaccumulate. To the extent possible then, documenting whether shorter chain perfluorinated compounds are or are not detected in biota would be useful in developing an effective management strategy.
We were surprised in 2000, and I believe the study is needed so we will not be surprised again in 2007.
The U.S. EPA is now investigating PFOA because of concerns over the compound's long residence time in humans and the possibility that at its current concentrations in mothers' blood it may pose a developmental risk to children.
Some fully fluorinated carbon molecules with a carboxylic group at the end, particularly the perfluorooctanoic acids, are thought to have a similar mechanism of toxicity to PFOS, which adds to the potential overall toxic effect of perfluorinated chemicals.
There is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the potential hazards of these substances to the environment and humans, notwithstanding their low concentrations in the environment. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the class of perfluorinated substances demonstrates similar if not the same modes of action, sites of toxicity, unique modes of bioaccumulation and modes of environmental transport that warrant attention as a class. While current concentrations are low compared to PCBs, their concentrations are climbing. Precaution should dictate not waiting for harm to be manifest before taking preventive actions.
At the conclusion of the ecological screening assessments conducted under CEPA, Canada stated that PFOS, its salts and its precursors would be managed as a group under the provisions of CEPA, 1999, with the objective of achieving the lowest level of releases in the environment that is technically and economically feasible from all emission sources. This is a positive step and it should be lauded, but it does not go as far as the precautionary principle would lead us.
The CEPA environmental registry also states that alternatives to PFOS, its salts and its precursors are available for the vast majority of industrial and manufacturing applications. The voluntary phase-out of PFOS production in 2002 has accelerated the switch to alternative products. I must ask why a firmer, more rapid imperative to product substitution has not been instituted, since the statement on the availability of alternatives is clear.
Given the knowledge gained from the notification process, Canada should be establishing a national process that supports a phased-out approach to these substances and other toxic substances found in manufactured items. The federal government should act to phase out PFOA, as well as chemicals that break down into PFOA.
To spur the development of alternatives, Canada could implement various tools to promote alternatives, including the use of extended producers' responsibility programs to address safe disposal methods for products containing perfluorinated compounds. Another tool is to ensure that labelling requirements target those retailers and manufacturers of fluorotelomer-based substances and to identify and list all fluorotelomer-based substances from the DSL list that meet criteria for categorization. Canada could impose a mandatory requirement for data generation by producers and users of these substances, particularly the ones still in use; and if the use is justified for these substances, there could be an education program targeting retailers and consumers.
The government could establish a multi-stakeholder process that would effectively address the ongoing problems with imported products containing CEPA toxic substances. Management tools, such as labelling and testing of products for toxic substances, which have not been exercised to any extent in controlling the import of manufactured goods, should be part of an integrated approach that has strong regulatory backing. This is something that is consistent in the European Union.
As part of CEPA, Canada should complete a chemical action plan for PFOA and chemicals that break down to PFOA by 2007, and expedite a review of the remaining perfluorinated compounds and take action when problems are identified.
Finally, I raise the importance of a functional CEPA in the control of such in-use substances of concern to the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem. I remind the members that the Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem is a federal-provincial agreement aimed at enhancing and protecting the basin ecosystem. The agreement outlines how the two governments will cooperate and coordinate their efforts regarding the Great Lakes Basin and its management.
COA was first signed in 1971 in anticipation of the Canada-United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. There have been seven COAs to present. Eight federal departments and three provincial ministries signed the most recent COA in 2002, and it expires in March 2007. Canada has not signalled to Ontario its decision to extend, revise or renegotiate the agreement. This is tremendous cause for concern.
Within COA is a Harmful Pollutants Annex, with the goal of virtually eliminating or reducing harmful pollutants in the Great Lakes. The job has not been done. Chemicals in commerce, such as those we are discussing today, still threaten the health and integrity of the Great Lakes regime.
The Great Lakes ecosystem supports two thirds of Canada's industrial economy, which provides billions of dollars annually to the Canadian economy. For that, we need a healthy Great Lakes environment. It is not a triviality.
The principles of the 2002 COA reflect contemporary agreements and research on environmental protection and management, but they have not been overtly considered. I have brought these to the attention of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development and now I will bring some of them to your attention. We ask you to consider open, continuous learning, innovation and improvement; pollution reduction, control at the source is a fundamental step in restoring the healthy ecosystem, and work must continue toward virtual elimination of persistent toxic substances and reduction in other substances. We ask you to consider the precautionary principle: Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. We ask for the precautionary principle in the COA and in the CEPA.
Will CEPA successfully invoke these principles in light of a current reliance on risk assessment and risk communication? Will COA continue to embody an emboldened CEPA? We in the Great Lakes Region depend on you to make this happen.
In addition, current in the Great Lakes regime is the ongoing governments' review of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. During this review, many citizens, industries, academics and bureaucrats have called out for the increasing importance to examine current science, policy and emerging concepts in ecosystem protection and the protection of human health. CEPA is highly relevant to this review, as it can set Canada's tone for mitigating chemical insults, for which it contains many commitments under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
The large surface area of the Great Lakes, and retention times of years to centuries, makes them exquisitely sensitive to persistent toxic substances such as we have been discussing today. I reaffirm a continuing and relentless call for special provisions within CEPA to accelerate aggressive action on chemical pollutants like the perfluorinated compounds in the Great Lakes Region, home to 8 million Canadians and, as I just mentioned, an area that generates two thirds of Canada's manufacturing output, for which natural resource protection is essential.
We in the Great Lakes Region ask that you urge our government to take this review seriously, to revise or rewrite the agreement to invoke strong, CEPA-based Great Lakes-St. Lawrence provisions for chemical management and push our U.S. colleagues to step up their commitments. We ask that this be done by providing the minister with the power to designate the region as a significant area, given that this region is particularly vulnerable to the effects of substances and that it generates a particularly large volume of these substances released into the environment.
I recommend that a federally led regulatory approach be taken to mitigating the threats of perfluorinated compounds, rather than turning to a CCME process. I recommend that the federal government comply with the precautionary principle in CEPA and act now in the face of uncertainty, but with evidence of harm associated with many perfluorinated compounds. I recommend that the federal government issue a firmer imperative for product substitution, given the availability of alternatives. I recommend that the federal government signal its intent to renew COA and revise the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, using in part, a strong CEPA agenda to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem.
The Chairman: Your recommendations are very clear, thank you. Members, if you are agreeable, we will hear from Dr. Schwarcz before we proceed with questions. We have been joined by our newest and very welcome member, Senator Mitchell, from Alberta.
Joe Schwarcz, Director, McGill University Office for Science and Society, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation to address you here today. Before I get into a discussion of fluorinated compounds, perhaps a little background is in order as to why I would be asked to come here and what I do.
I direct McGill University's Office for Science and Society, which is a unique venture — certainly in North America and, we like to think, in the world. It is the first time that any major university has said that our responsibility does not end the moment our students leave the Roddick Gates on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal. Today, there is such a thirst and hunger for scientific information from the public that there needs to be a place to address their questions and get some clarification in an unbiased way. This is the reason our office was founded in 1999.
We do not receive biased funding; our funding comes from the university, so we have no reason to push one agenda over another. Our mission is to educate, not to advocate. Our responsibility is to tell students and the public not what to think but how to think.
In conjunction with directing the office at McGill, I also teach in our chemistry department and our medical school. I do a weekly radio program on Montreal CJD and Toronto CFRB where I discuss science in the news and answer questions from the public. That allows me to have my fingerers on the pulse of the public, its interests and concerns and what should be addressed. I also do pieces on Discovery Channel where we get to know the current concerns and where we try to respond to them. I say this to give you the background that we feel that we have a certain responsibility to give unbiased information to the public on all of these methodologies.
We get questions by email and telephone about all kinds of issues. Let me give you an example of the questions that we have been asked in the last couple of weeks. People have asked us questions about the pesticides that contain 2,4-D, which is a weed killer. We have been asked about asbestos, mercury and lead, particularly lead acetate in hair dyes for men to get rid of greying hair. People are concerned about chloroform in the shower, because most water supplies are chlorinated and this gives rise to trihalomethanes, which are a class of compounds that are potentially carcinogenic, and you could probably leave out ``potential'' because they are carcinogenic. We get calls about bisphenol A, which can leach out of polycarbonate plastics and is used in some dental procedures. It is pervasive in the environment. People are concerned with methyl tert-butyl ether, which is used in the U.S. as a gasoline additive. We receive calls on phthalates, which are plasticizing agents and potentially estrogenic compounds, and chromated copper arsenate, which is used in the treatment of wood as a wood preservative. We hear concerns about aspartame, the artificial sweeter and monosodium glutamate. We receive questions about food dyes and hyperactivity in children. People ask us about musk fragrance, which some believe is highly toxic. We receive questions about parabins, which is a preservative used in many cosmetics. We hear concerns about antimony trioxide, used as a catalyst and polymerization of polyester that is used in the water bottles that everyone is running around with; there is worry that antimony leaches out, and antimony in the body acts as arsenic. People ask us about morphyline, which is used to make the synthetic wax on apples. We hear from people who ask about formaldehyde emanating from particleboard and PCBs in salmon. We hear about concerns for wood burning stoves, which are a huge concern and should be a gigantic concern because we are really spewing massive amounts of carcinogenic substances into the environment, far greater in volume than anything else that I have mentioned. We are asked questions about flame-retardants, like the brominated ethers and perchloroethylene, which is the dry cleaning solvent, generally being phased out because it is thought to be a carcinogen. I do not think I would want to be working in that particular industry. People are concerned about benzene in soft drinks, which was a huge concern. You may have remembered that from a couple of months ago, but it is still around. Then there are worries about nano-particles in cosmetics and dichlorobenzene, which is used as a moth repellent agent and is found in our blood. We hear concerns about monophenols, which are surfactants used in a variety of shampoos and other cosmetics. People call us concerning perchlorate, which is an oxidizing agent used to make rocket fuel in the U.S, but it has gotten into the water supply and is almost everywhere; it is a potential carcinogen. Lastly, we hear concerns about sodium laurel sulphate, another detergent, and sodium laureth sulphate, because of possible estrogenic effects.
We have dealt with these issues in the last few weeks, and I mention them to highlight the fact that each one of these has non-government activist groups behind it that has huge volumes of opinion on each issue. These are widely debated issues. We are here today to talk about the fluorinated compounds, but there are people across the world sitting in committee rooms like this discussing each one of these chemicals in the same kind of detail. The world is extremely complex. It is difficult to come to conclusions about each one of these items and how they relate to our life and how they cross-react. We cannot have simple-minded conclusions about these things. It is an extremely complex subject.
I will not go into the chemistry of the fluorinated compounds, although I would be happy to answer questions. I will not go into this because you heard from Scott Mabury, the Wayne Gretzky of fluorinated compounds; compared to him, I am playing in the minor leagues. I have a fairly good understanding of the chemistry, so I certainly can answer any questions on that subject. Professor Mabury has made a name for himself because in a clever way, he has elucidated how these fluorinated compounds, particularly the telomers, spread around due to atmospheric currents, how they get into food from packaging and how some of the alcohol functional groups oxidize to the acid. He has done some marvellous work, including how the fluorinated compounds end up in the livers of polar bears, and that has been much discussed.
The poor polar bear has become the marquee player in this game, which is quite interesting. People say that they worry about eating the liver of the polar bear because of the fluorinated compounds. I would worry more about eating the liver of the polar bear because of the vitamin A contained in the liver. Arctic explorers, in early days when they had to resort to eating polar bears, died of vitamin A toxicity, because it is such a concentrated source in the polar bear liver. I introduced that idea to suggest that toxicology is extremely complex, and there are many substances that we have to take into account.
Nature is not benign. Nature, in fact, is very dangerous. We spend our life trying to overcome the ravages of nature. Numerous compounds occur in nature that, if we scrutinized them in the same way that we scrutinized some of the industrial chemicals, would horrified us, but no one does that because they are natural. Ethyl carbonate, which found naturally in beer, is a carcinogen. It would never be allowed if it were an additive. Furocoumarins are found in celery, and people have reactions to these; there is a condition called celery handlers' disease, and people who work with celery all the time get rashes on their hands when they expose their hands to ultraviolet light after they have worked with celery. It is completely natural.
Coffee contains at least five proven carcinogens that I know if, ranging from caffeic acid to benzene to furfural. These are not theoretical carcinogens. These are substance that, in animals, have been shown to cause cancer.
Anything termed a carcinogen is so termed because science has shown that, in some species of animals, in some dose, it causes cancer. The term ``carcinogen'' should not be interpreted to mean that it is known to cause cancer in humans. That is not the scientific interpretation. If coffee were introduced as a novel substance, a food concocted by putting together the ingredients, it would never be allowed on the market because it could never pass muster. Furfural, one of the substances found in coffee, is a carcinogen. However, it is a carcinogen at a dose that is unrealistic in terms of humans. It takes about 200 milligrams per kilogram to trigger cancer in a rat, but it does trigger cancer; therefore, it is a carcinogen. Sometimes people say if you give a rat anything in a high enough dose, it will cause cancer. That is not true. If you give anything to a rat in a high enough dose, it will kill the rat, whether it is salt or water, but not necessarily through cancer. There are only 50 substances known to mankind known to cause cancer and therefore termed carcinogens. Just because they are so termed does not mean they cause cancer in humans.
For example, we know that coffee does not. If we have enough epidemiological evidence about any substance in the world, it is about coffee. Enough coffee is consumed that we would know if it caused cancer in humans. It does not, even though it contains at least five different carcinogens.
Each time we eat a hamburger or a steak, we are exposed to a variety of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, known carcinogens. In fact, these were the first substances ever recognized as carcinogens. This goes back to the late 1700s, when chimney sweeps were found to have an increased incidence of testicular cancer. This was related to the fact that they were constantly exposed to smoke from wood-burning fires. Obviously, that is a carcinogen, a polyaromatic hydrocarbon, yet we eat those all the time in our charcoal-broiled meats.
There are a variety of moulds that infest our food supply. Corn, for example, can be infested with a variety of moulds that produce compounds known as micotoxins, which is the general term. These are known cancer-causing substances and, unfortunately, they exist in our food supply. Nature is certainly not benign.
Let me try to address the issue of the fluorinated compounds to see how they fit into this scheme of things. Over the years, I have been asked about this issue many times. I have had to scrutinize the literature and, based upon principles of toxicology and chemistry, have come to conclusions about how I think this fits together.
It is an interesting topic. The story starts back in the late 1930s, when a chemist named Roy Plunkett was hired by DuPont. He was challenged to come up with a new refrigerant material because the classic refrigerators in those days ran on the highly toxic ammonia and sulphur dioxide. If you had one of those refrigerators in your home, you hoped the pipes would not leak because you would be exposed to a highly toxic substance.
Along came Plunkett, and he was challenged to find a novel substance that was less toxic. There was information that the so-called freons, chlorofluorocarbons, were the answer because they were not toxic in an acute fashion. You could be exposed to huge amounts without any toxicity, so they were excellent refrigerants.
He decided to try to find freons that would work well in a refrigerator and that could be economically produced. He started by using a material called tetrafluoroethylene, from which he was going to make a substance that could be used as a refrigerant. One day he was shocked because he had made this tetrafluoroethylene, which he stored in a gas cylinder, and in the morning, when he wanted to release some of this to try to make one of his freons, nothing came out. He lifted the cylinder and it weighed the same, so there had been no leak. He cut open the cylinder and, instead of finding a gas inside, he found a white solid. It was extremely slippery. They tried to burn it; it would not burn. They poured acid on it; it would not react with acid or anything at all; Teflon was born. Accidentally, inside the cylinder, the small molecules of tetrafluoroethylene had reacted to form a polymer, a giant molecule. They did not know what to do with it and DuPont just stockpiled it, waiting for the time to come where it could be useful.
In the early 1940s, when the Manhattan Project was initiated, there was a need. The Manhattan Project needed to separate uranium-235 from uranium-238. Uranium- 238 is the most widely occurring isotope of uranium, but very small amounts of uranium-235 are found. You need to separate them to make an atom bomb. In order to do that, you have to convert the uranium to uranium hexafluoride, a gas; then you can separate the two isotopes. To do that, you needed fluorine, a highly reactive element. It turned out that the piping they had would stand up to this. They went to DuPont and DuPont said, we have what you need. Out came Teflon and it was the solution to the Manhattan Project. The atom bomb, in all probability, could not have been produced without Teflon.
After the war, Teflon was commercialized and its non-slippery nature was used in the making of Teflon pots and pans. It was a marvellous invention that allowed people to cook at a lower temperature without scorching their food; no polyaromatic hydrocarbons were produced in the Teflon pans. However, in order to make it on a large scale, new technology had to be developed. The technology used to make Teflon to coat onto pots and pans is a process known as emulsion polymerization, which requires the use of perfluorooctanoic acid. In order to mix the Teflon with water, which is needed for the preparation of this coating, they need a surfactant. It is much like when you make a salad dressing and you need to mix the oil and vinegar, you need to put in a bit of egg yoke, because one end of the molecule called lecithin in the egg yoke anchors itself in the water, the other end anchors itself in the fat and you get the mixture. This is what PFOA does in Teflon manufacture. At that time, of course, no one had any idea of any potential problem in the future. There was an immediate problem that had to be solved and they solved it because it was an extremely useful material.
No one can predict the long-term consequences of many of our interventions. When freon was first introduced, it solved an immediate problem. Who could have thought that 30 years down the road, we would be worrying about freon letting through ultraviolet light in the stratosphere? It was not a concept back when it was originally introduced.
As the technology evolved and analytical chemists became more adept at finding substances, we began to see that PFOA was widespread in the environment and, more specifically, even in our blood, finding it to the extent of five parts per billion. That is not very much. A part per billion is one second in 32 years. It is amazing to be able to detect something down to the levels of parts per billion. That is a testimonial to the analytical chemists. They really are the problem because they are finding absolutely everything, and soon we will find that everything is contaminated by everything.
Molecules are so small and travel so easily that we have exchanges all the time. When you shake hands with someone or, even worse, you kiss someone, you are exchanging billions and billions and billions of molecules. There are all kinds of compounds in our air. You take one breath right now and I can assure you that you are inhaling molecules that have been previously inhaled and exhaled by Napoleon, Hitler or anyone you chose in history, because of global mixing of molecules.
We have incredible abilities to pick up things today. Just because something is there does not mean it is doing harm. It just means it is there. It takes more effort to determine whether something is harmful. This is where we run into difficulties.
To determine acute toxicity is easy. You feed something to a rat, keep increasing the dose and you see whether something happens immediately. However, acute toxicity does not necessarily determine chronic toxicity. We worry about exposure to small doses over a long period of time.
Take vitamin D, for example. It is acutely toxic; 10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight will kill you, but it is absolutely necessary in much smaller doses. We need about 10 micrograms every day of vitamin D for good health — maybe even a little more because we are finding that it is an anti-cancer compound. Here you have something that is acutely highly toxic, but chronically, it is beneficial. It is difficult to predict these things.
We have to mention another concept called hormesis, which is a relatively new idea, championed by Dr. Edward Calabrese, University of Massachusetts, one of the most renowned toxicologists in the world. The theory is that at very low concentrations, substances behave differently from the way they behave at higher concentrations. It is inherently unpredictable.
Again, I give you a vitamin example. Vitamin A, at a low dose, behaves very differently from a high dose. There are numerous examples like that. DDT, for example, behaves very differently at a low dose than it does at a high dose. In fact, at low doses, there are substances that can be beneficial that, at a high dose, are very problematic.
Broccoli is a good example. We know it generates suphurophane, one of the most powerful anti-cancer compounds that exists, which triggers the production of detoxicating enzymes in the body. In high doses, it would be toxic, but in very small amounts, substances which are toxic make the body produce enzymes that are detoxicating. In small doses, the world is different than it is on the macroscopic level. This is why it is difficult to know what to say about substances detected in our blood or environment at a low dose. Do they have a hormetic effect? Who knows?
In 2000, 3M decided to remove PFOAs from the market and came up with a butyl substitute, which I think is better, but no one can prove it is safe under all conditions. You can only prove harm, never safety. The precautionary principle is a seductive one and we try to live by it, but you can never follow it to the extreme and say that you have proven something is completely safe because you cannot test it under all conditions.
The public became aware of this when 20/20 highlighted an unfortunate young man who suffered various deformities. It was generally thought there was damage to the fetus and 20/20 focused on him because his mother had been working in DuPont in the manufacture of perfluorinated substances. These substances were found in the mothers' blood and likely had been in the fetus. He had 30 operations to try to correct the deformities. It was a heart-wrenching case.
In science, it is anecdotal evidence, and the plural of anecdote is not science. We need better evaluation. We need to look at large numbers of people who were exposed to these chemicals to see whether there are deformities and, so far, that has not been revealed.
There are some concerns that I would highlight with PFOS and PFOA. One is the estrogenic possibility, where we do worry about very small doses of substances when they have potential hormonal effects. Recently, we found that PFOA and other perfluorinated compounds, when injected into animals, in this case fish, turned out to have estrogenic effects. They played havoc with the hormones in small concentrations. We need to pay attention to this issue, but there are numerous estrogenic substances in the environment that occur naturally.
Last week you may have seen the paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, where a clever doctor linked three cases of breast growth in young boys to a cosmetic they had been using which had a lavender scent. This is the first time we have heard about this. Lavender, which is universal because of its pleasant smell, turns out to have a potential estrogenic component. Will we ban the lavender smell because of this potential? We do not ban tobacco, so why lavender. Here is a naturally estrogenic compound and if we focused on that we would have the same debate as we are having with PFOA and PFOS. That does not mean the debate is not legitimate.
Whether or not these fluorinated compounds are carcinogens is highly debatable. Tumours do form in test animals with high doses and they are benign tumours. I have scrutinized the studies and cannot find anywhere where there are malignant tumours that have been caused by this compound. Any kind of tumour is a concern, but the doses that have been used are extremely high.
In any case, it would be great if we could reduce the substances because there are some unanswered questions. I do not think that they are tremendously dangerous based on the information that I have looked at, but they can be curtailed. I think that the debate is going to disappear because chemists, I like to think, by and large are clever people. Chemistry is the study of matter and the changes it undergoes, which means it is the study of everything because matter is anything that has mass and occupies space.
Whenever push comes to shove, problems get solved. In this case, push has come to shove because DuPont was hit where it hurts, which is in the pocket. DuPont already had to pay a fine to the EPA, not for reasons of which the public was aware, but because some of their early data, where they had found fluorinated compounds in their workers' blood, was not submitted to the EPA. It should have been, but it was not so they paid a fine.
They also had an out of court settlement with people living around their West Virginia production plant. People were claiming that there were PFOAs in the drinking water, which there were, and DuPont had not controlled the amount that was released during Teflon manufacture. They did not pay enough attention because they did not think it was a problem. DuPont was sued and they settled out of court for $300 million, not admitting guilt but admitting PFOA was present. They do not want to deal with this so they put their chemists to work to solve the problem. At the EPA's urging, they committed to doing this by 2015.
Last week DuPont announced they were ahead of the game and would do this at least three years early. They found a way to make Teflon with a minimal amount of PFOA and they have a way of removing any residual PFOA before the Teflon is released. They have also gone a long way towards solving the telomer problem. When these substances are manufactured, some of the breakdown products of telomers are converted and they are claiming 96 per cent removal of all these fluorinated compounds from the finished product. It seems that they are on the job and they are successful at it.
People's concern about their Teflon pots and pans will become a smaller issue because I think the amount of PFOA released is minimal. I think it is minimal already when the pots and pans are used properly. If they are heated to a high temperature and are forgotten on the stove, the Teflon will breakdown and release some PFOAs. Clinically, the only thing ever demonstrated is that the fumes from cookware left on the stove are lethal to birds whose lungs are sensitive to any kind of fluorinated compound. In terms of humans, the only thing seen is polymer fume fever, a flu-like condition that lasts a few days.
I would be happy to answer any more questions about that, but I want to leave you with one final idea. Whenever we look at issues like this, the prime concern is cancer. This is what everyone worries about because it is the most dreadful of diseases.
The truth is that ever since Richard Nixon launched his war on cancer in the early 1970s, we have not made huge advances in its treatment. Certainly, we have made some, but not huge advances, so it is worrisome. We especially worry about premature cancer, cases of cancer that strike people at an age younger than the life expectancy.
Today, about 35 per cent of premature cancer cases are due to an unbalanced diet. This is where we really have to pay attention. Five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day will go a long way to reducing the incidence of cancer. People do not like to hear that. I always find it quite staggering that people say they cannot eat five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. It is not that difficult to do. I give this advice on the radio and I write a column in The Gazette as well. The same people who worry about this will go into a health food store and uncritically buy something off the shelf that promises that they will live forever because of the antioxidant content in the pills. It is served to them by the girl behind the counter dressed in the white lab coat, who looks official. The week before, she may have been mopping floors at McDonald's but now she is dispensing medical advice. They are uncritical about that but they say they cannot eat the five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables. We can go a long way toward cutting down the incidence of cancer by eating properly.
About 30 per cent of premature cases of cancer are due to tobacco. We are not addressing that issue. We are debating whether PFOA is a carcinogen at parts-per-billion levels, and we have a known carcinogen that sold legally to the public. Another 10 per cent of premature cases are due to infections; 7 per cent to sexual behaviour, the transmission of viruses; and occupational exposure accounts for about 5 per cent, which includes people who work in the pesticide industry or people who work closely with mercury. I am sure you discussed mad hatters' disease when you looked at mercury. Then there is alcohol; 3 per cent of premature cancers are due to ethanol, which is a carcinogen; it causes cancer of the oesophagus and the tongue. If ethanol were a synthetic substance made by some chemical company that wanted to put it on the market, it would never be allowed; however, because it is a natural product of fermentation, we sing its praises.
That leaves me to the last number, which is 1 per cent. Researchers agree that industrial products cause 1 per cent of these premature cancers. These items include pesticides, weed killers, asbestos, PFOA, the chlorinated compounds all of these, which are issues in and of themselves.
It is important to look at all of these problems in perspective, and see where they fit into the scheme of things, and where we should really be putting our advice — what we should be recommending. One of the most important things in life is knowing what to worry about. Worry, itself, is dangerous; it predisposes you to disease.
Let us worry about things; but, primarily, let us worry about the public having the proper diet and about somehow eliminating tobacco, and then concern ourselves with the parts per billions of chemicals found in the blood. They certainly are not negligible, but they are not at the same level of worry as the other issues I mentioned.
I would be happy to answer any chemical questions or, more specifically questions about the fluorinated compounds that you may have.
Senator Angus: I have to say, my head is spinning. I do not know whether to sell my wood stove or become a vegetarian or never take another pill.
Mr. Schwarcz: You do not need to become a vegetarian; you just need to cut down on the amount of meat. You do not have to have the steak hanging over the side of the plate with a few anaemic peas and slivers of carrots. Build up the vegetables and cut down on the steak.
Senator Angus: Now I know why my canary keeled over in its cage in our kitchen. This is pretty incredible stuff.
We have been very fortunate in our committee, and we have all shaken our heads over the last several weeks. The first session we thought was Chemistry 101, the second Chemistry 404, and today, it is Chemistry 1000. It is certainly beyond me. Dr. Krantzberg, even you were having trouble reading your very learned paper because it is so complex.
What we are trying to do is to derive some evidence to support appropriate recommendations to improve what is going on in the framework of environmental legislation, particularly the CEPA framework. I thought it was extremely helpful, Dr. Krantzberg, that you have listed four very clear recommendations.
As I read them, CEPA is okay, as far as you are concerned. The tools are there but they are not necessarily being used properly. Do I read you correctly? In other words, I do not see a specific recommendation for a legislative amendment.
Ms. Krantzberg: That is correct. I think that CEPA is a good piece of legislation; however, there are difficulties in implementing regulations around substances that are within products. CEPA has the necessary tools to regulate or determine something CEPA toxic and come up with virtual elimination of chemicals that are released into the environment. Where CEPA comes into difficulty is where those substances are within products, and now it is a product on the market. CEPA is not designed to regulate a product, so that is a constraint.
The other point I would make around CEPA, and Dr. Schwarcz mentioned it, is that the notion of the precautionary principle is complex. CEPA bears the precautionary principle. It states that scientific uncertainty will not preclude action. It is a question of how much uncertainty the government is willing to accept before it acts.
When we look at other jurisdictions around the world, we know that some of the perfluorinated compounds have been banned through legislation in the EU, invoking the precautionary principle. We purportedly invoked the precautionary principle in Canada, but it appears that the government seems to be less comfortable with scientific uncertainty than in the EU member nations.
The principles are enshrined in CEPA, but it is a question of implementation. There is a lot of discussion in CEPA about risk management and risk communication as ways of addressing the reduction of exposure to substances. Risk communication is not necessarily risk reduction. Real risk reduction removes the substance from exposure. Humans are not exposed to the substance, which is risk reduction. Risk communication seeks to do that by educating, but it does not always work. Fundamentally, CEPA has the tools. It is how the tools are used and implemented that bears scrutiny.
Senator Angus: That is very interesting. It struck me was when you said we are breathing in the same molecules as Mussolini, Hitler and maybe even Osama bin Laden. I asked myself, is it too late? Have all these toxins and carcinogens produced by humans, quite apart from the natural ones you highlighted, done so much damage to our environment that it is beyond repair?
Mr. Schwarcz: I do not think so. With all of these issues, there is the question of benefit versus risk. Most of the substances we have introduced into the environment, have had some decided benefit.
Teflon has revolutionized microcircuitry. We would not have our computer technology and we would not be able to travel in space if it were not for Teflon. Sometimes the piper comes, and we must pay him. You must also ask the question, how much did you enjoy the music and was it worthwhile?
Senator Angus: It is really about risk management. For every good thing we get, there is a small price to pay.
Mr. Schwarcz: Yes, we must understand it is impossible to eliminate all risk. We have to live with a certain amount of risk. We need to evaluate whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
Ms. Krantzberg: You asked if it is too late. I agree that it is not too late and I will provide the committee with a concrete example.
Twenty-five or 30 years ago, Rachel Carson's famous and controversial Silent Spring came out. We saw the disappearance of bald eagles, cormorants and peregrine falcons from the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes region. They disappeared. Why? The amount of DDT in the shells of the developing eggs was high enough that the eggshells were so thin that they collapsed under the weight of incubation. We banned DDT from production. PCB was banned from production. Levels dropped precipitously, and guess what? Bald eagles and peregrine falcons are back in the region. We found a problem with a chemical, took an action and the ecosystem responded with resilience.
Yes, these molecules are around. Water will stay in Lake Superior for 190 years, so it will take a long time to get rid of it. As long as the concentrations come down to a level where the effects are not acute and the chronic effects start to decline, the human and ecosystems have the capability to respond.
Mr. Schwarcz: We eliminated PFOS in 2000 and by 2003 we saw decreases in the environment.
Senator Angus: I missed last week's committee, but I read the material. Dr. Mabry, who you mentioned is the Wayne Gretzky in this area, seems to be a total zero tolerance man or an abolitionist. With respect to you, it depends on the dosage.
Mr. Schwarcz: I am not sure he is an abolitionist. I think he has great confidence in chemically solving the problem so that we will be able to abolish those particular telomers by coming up with substitutes.
Senator Angus: He said toxicologists are arguing about whether or not the levels in human blood are a problem. My view is that it should not be there at all, period.
Mr. Schwarcz: It should not be there at all; I agree.
Senator Angus: That is in a perfect world.
Mr. Schwarcz: In a perfect world, you have a choice. However, you also want to have paper products that will not allow grease to seep through. When you have your pizza delivered, you want it to look edible. You want Teflon. There are ways to solve the problem.
Of course, if you must choose, you would determine you do not want those substances in your blood. Just because it is present in your blood is not enough to say it is doing harm.
Senator Angus: There is a familiar ring here. Last night, we looked at a bill to have the federal government hold legislative power to oversee the various provinces and municipalities in terms of ensuring that the community water supplies are proper. Some of us asked ourselves, why duplicate?
I see in your evidence today that you are suggesting federal oversight and legislation in some areas where there is a failure; am I right?
Ms. Krantzberg: The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment is a valuable place for debate and for the cross-sharing of information. When you are dealing with chemicals of national significance that are widely used and dispersed and that do not necessarily respond in a regional way, the federal government needs to intervene on behalf of protecting human health, society, water quality, et cetera. There is a distinct role for the federal government to have oversight of the provinces on some issues. I am not trying to malign the CCME process, but it is not a sufficient federal water policy to protect Canadians; it is a good forum for discussion.
Senator Angus: There are not necessarily common standards everywhere in the application.
Ms. Krantzberg: When we are talking about complicated chemicals, if each jurisdiction sets its own standards, it has tremendous ramifications for commerce in each of those provinces. Furthermore, when substances travel as widely as they do, as Dr. Schwarcz just mentioned, I believe the federal government needs to set a national standard that the provinces meet or exceed.
Senator Angus: This is fascinating. I am from Montreal. Dr. Schwarcz, I hear you on the radio, I read your column in The Gazette and I see on you the Discovery Channel. In some of his books, Dr. Schwarcz has demystified these complicated scientific formulae. His books are very constructive and help the reader to understand these important issues. I feel very enlightened and fortunate to hear about this problem in an understandable way. We can learn about the terrible things we are doing and what we can do to avoid the problem. That is my intervention.
Senator Milne: Dr. Schwarcz, your presentation said that everything should be taken and looked at in perspective; it is more important that I eat the apple than worry about the wax on it.
Mr. Schwarcz: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Milne: Dr. Krantzberg's presentation was all about the precautionary principle, which is part of CEPA, and I think it is very important.
We all know that if I drank nothing but coffee all day long, I would become extremely ill. If I ate nothing but apples all day long, I would become extremely ill. Too much of anything can kill us.
I want to address my questions to Dr. Krantzberg because you were very specific and you end your written presentation with a series of hard and strong recommendations.
I live in the Great Lakes Basin. I am from Brampton. Your presentation was excellent, but I am concerned about the sidebar that you tacked on at the end about COA, the Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem. The most recent agreement was in 2002, and it expires in 2007. That is this year.
Ms. Krantzberg: Yes, it expires in March of 2007.
Senator Milne: That is next month. Canada has, at present, done absolutely nothing about renewing it.
Ms. Krantzberg: The provincial and federal ministers of the environment have met to start discussions, but our understanding is that the federal minister has not been given direction as to whether or not to renew COA and in what time frame.
COA brings it with funding for Great Lakes protection and remediation, for reduction in harmful pollutants, and for cleaning up such places as Hamilton harbour, which is not far from Brampton or from where I teach at McMaster University. The sport fishing industry alone is worth almost $4 billion per year to Ontario. Without funding, all of that is at risk.
Canada and Ontario can extend the current COA for a few more years, but what is needed is a commitment on paper and it is needed right now. When that agreement expires, all bets are off as to what the federal priorities will be on the Great Lakes and how the federal government will coordinate with Ontario, which is the only provincial jurisdiction on the Great Lakes.
Canada needs Ontario to help it meet its binational commitments on the Great Lakes. A large portion of the COA deals with reduction in loadings of harmful pollutants in the Great Lakes for which there needs to be coordinated action between the federal government and the province. How the bureaucrats, who are very well intended, will continue to do that is unknown in the absence of a COA.
Senator Milne: What funding did COA have in the past?
Ms. Krantzberg: From 2002 to 2007, the Province of Ontario invested $50 million. The federal government went to cabinet with a proposal for a $1 billion program for five years and they received $40 million, simply to help address 15 geographic locations that were particularly degraded. This funding went to areas of concern such as Hamilton harbour and the Toronto waterfront, but the funding did not cover any other areas.
The Chairman: Was that in 2002?
Ms. Krantzberg: Yes.
Senator Milne: Has that money come through?
Ms. Krantzberg: Yes, and it has been spent.
Senator Milne: Those particular projects are finished.
Ms. Krantzberg: It actually went through in 2001, in anticipation of the 2002 Canada-Ontario agreement.
Senator Milne: This goes back to an interest this committee expressed before we received CEPA on studies of water and water quality across the country. We were taking it in areas, and the Great Lakes Basin was a large part of that study.
Ms. Krantzberg: The federal program they went to cabinet for was to address the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Region all the way out to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The funding was strictly Ontario-based and for 15 communities.
Senator Milne: Of course, through COA it would be strictly Ontario-based. The federal government would have had to come to an agreement with the Province of Quebec.
Ms. Krantzberg: It has. There is a Quebec-Canada agreement.
Senator Milne: Is that expiring as well?
Ms. Krantzberg: I do not know. I think that one is still ongoing, but it will come up for renewal as well.
Senator Milne: That is of great concern to all Canadians, because the Great Lakes Basin includes much of the economic engine of this country.
Coming back to the precautionary principle:
Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Mr. Schwarcz: I do not think we can ever have full scientific certainty.
Senator Milne: Precisely, it is never there. There will always be researchers who will tell you the opposite.
Mr. Schwarcz: Ms. Krantzberg mentioned the mercury issue, which is a good example. Here we have concrete evidence. If someone asks whether we should be limiting the amount of mercury in the environment, we say absolutely, because the studies have shown toxicity in humans. It is categorical. There is no doubt about it.
Senator Milne: As you say, there is mad hatters' disease.
Mr. Schwarcz: The U.S. equivalent is the Danbury shakes, from Danbury, Connecticut. I do not see the same thing with PFOA. I have scoured the literature, but I do not find the studies comparable to the mercury studies, which show the human problem. There are suggestive studies in animals, which are always fraught with problems; a human is not a giant rat.
It is very difficult. I do not see the parallel. Studies have been done on PFOA, including DuPont's own epidemiological studies, which have been extensive. People tend to dismiss the studies because they were done by DuPont, but who else would do them? DuPont has a vested interest in this subject. Their epidemiological studies have not revealed anything that I can see. I do not see the fluorinated compounds in the same vein as mercury, lead or the other established problems.
Ms. Krantzberg: My concern is, if these substances continue to be produced and released into the environment, concentrations will increase. I am encouraged by the voluntary removal of many of these substances from the marketplace. This is an interesting example. We do not see it with all of the compounds. I still believe that the cautionary principle is necessary because of our inability to predict the effects at rising concentrations. As long as demographics increase, as long as we have more people using more of these substances and more of these substances are used in commerce, those concentrations will increase. Hence, the precautionary principle asks that we do not wait for definitive harm to be demonstrated before we take action.
Is this the precise situation we are in with PFOA right now? It is a complex answer. The EPA has called PFOA a potential or a likely carcinogen. In the face of EPA and in the face of industry voluntarily removing products from market, it signals to me these are problematic products that should be regulated, if industry is not doing so voluntarily, because there are available alternatives.
These substances have benefits to society, but if innovative or green chemistry can provide less damaging alternatives, such as we have for the CFCs, why should we not be using them? We do not want the substances in our blood, as the senator mentioned before, and if alternative chemistry exists, let us move on with it.
The Chairman: Do you agree that alternative chemistry includes polymers that have chains of fewer than four links, which are less likely to be bioaccumulative? Is that an alternative?
Ms. Krantzberg: I believe it is an alternative. We need to do due diligence to make sure these substances are not bioaccumulative. Structurally, it does not seem they should be. Let us demonstrate that to be certain, and those could very well be viable alternatives.
Mr. Schwarcz: The problem is characterized by having the problem, trying to solve that problem and hoping that the solution does not introduce a problem bigger than the original. That is the way that things usually work, but not always. There are examples in our past where we thought we had solved the problem but we created a bigger one.
It should also be mentioned that our abilities to predict today what certain compounds can do is far more sophisticated than it used to be. Today, we have a much better understanding of how the body's detoxifying systems work, what enzymes are responsible and what compounds it can remove. We know a great deal more about the chemistry of molecules, knowing which types are likely to bioaccumulate and which ones are likely to degrade in the environment.
Our knowledge about predicting the future is much better than it used to be. Predictions about the shorter chain of fluorinated compounds are valid, and they are less likely to present any problem.
Senator Milne: Senator Angus, this was precisely what the professor told us last week. The professor said that there are alternatives. The shorter chain perfluorinated acids exist and appear to do the same job, and if these surface treatment residuals are removed properly in the manufacturing process, he said that there was not as much or any damage; there is still hope.
Senator Cochrane: You have sparked an interest in me from some of the things that you mentioned in the latter part of your address. I will ask you a personal question.
Mr. Schwarcz: It has been done before.
Senator Cochrane: When I get in my car and turn on the air conditioning, I get a sore throat.
Mr. Schwarcz: Chances are you have a mould growing in your air conditioning system in the car. It is not an uncommon problem.
Senator Cochrane: Do I have to buy a new car?
Mr. Schwarcz: The first thing to do is spray Lysol into your air conditioning system. That often cures the problem. If not, you have to have it professionally flushed out, but that is the likely problem.
Senator Cochrane: You also mentioned five to 10 servings of vegetables. Do you mean fruits and vegetables?
Mr. Schwarcz: Yes, fruits and vegetables. We will not force you to eat 10 servings of vegetables.
Senator Cochrane: Ms. Krantzberg, in your brief, you say, ``To spur the development of alternatives, Canada could implement various tools to promote alternatives. . . .''
Would you be specific and suggest how you think these ought to be implemented using CEPA?
Ms. Krantzberg: Many of the tools are probably not related directly to CEPA. Some of them may be, particularly in terms of communications. There is a whole element about risk management under CEPA.
I just had some not so generous things to say about risk management a few moments ago. With respect to communicating risk and providing direction to industry, if there is a need to communicate the risk of products to consumers, that is an incentive for industry to be more creative to reduce the risk inherent in their product, so they do not need to communicate to the consumer. Getting the industry involved in the risk management aspect of CEPA could stimulate faster innovation from an industrial response point of view.
Senator Cochrane: Is CEPA doing that now?
Ms. Krantzberg: I do not see a lot of evidence of it. Now that we have come out of the chemical characterization process, it is time for CEPA to start down this venue. I know there is a challenge to industry. That is a good first step. That could be further developed; it could be more sophisticated.
Senator Cochrane: You rightly mentioned that alternatives to PFOS are available for many industrial and manufacturing applications and question why a more rapid imperative to product substitution has not been instituted. Do you have any thoughts on how CEPA could be used or modified to institute this substitution?
Ms. Krantzberg: If the substance was prohibited under CEPA, that would accelerate the change, it is that simple.
The fact that industry in Canada is emulating the EU, seeing that some of the longer chain fluorinated compounds are being replaced, a way to accelerate that would be to make it imperative rather than voluntary; require it under the legislation rather than have it as a voluntary initiative.
Senator Cochrane: What is the problem with COA between Ontario and the federal government? Which government is not doing its job?
Ms. Krantzberg: There is a large degree of uncertainty within Environment Canada as to the importance of the Great Lakes and who is leading in the Great Lakes regime. It is difficult to find people in Environment Canada who understand the importance of the Great Lakes. There has been a loss of personnel and a loss of the institutional capacity around Great Lakes matters within Environment Canada who has the lead responsibility to negotiate COA with Ontario. There are eight federal departments; nevertheless, it is Environment Canada's responsibility to see that COA is in place.
There is tremendous confusion within Environment Canada with the change in administration, and with the change in personnel, the deputy and the minister. What is the priority? Will the Great Lakes be a priority for Environment Canada, considering the Great Lakes are a national resource; or are they not? I do not see a lot of leadership at Environment Canada.
We see a lot of work happening now at the provincial level that we have not seen in the previous several years. The province is getting its house in order, which is encouraging. That provides for great opportunity, federally, to work and meet with the new people and work with the energy and synergy. We just do not see the leadership at Environment Canada.
Senator Cochrane: Maybe Ontario has to take leadership in informing the department people to see the need to do that.
Ms. Krantzberg: That is the current status. The province is meeting with the federal folks, trying to get them more engaged, but they do not know where they are. They are getting mixed messages from the federal government.
The Chairman: To be fair, there is a lot that ought to have been done beginning in 2002 that has not been done and was not done before the present change in the government. Is that fair?
Ms. Krantzberg: Do you mean federal participation?
The Chairman: This is not a brand new problem.
Ms. Krantzberg: This is not a new problem.
Senator Milne: There was an agreement signed in 2002, and they should have been working towards the next one all along.
Senator Cochrane: They should have been.
You say that there is a call for specific provisions within CEPA to ``accelerate aggressive action'' on chemical pollutants in the Great Lakes. You ask:
. . . that this be done by providing the minister with the power to designate the region as a significant area, given that this region is particularly vulnerable to the effects of substances and that it generates a particularly large volume of these substances released into the environment.
Could you explain the effect this would cause?
Ms. Krantzberg: During the review of CEPA, many have called for the ability of the Minister of Environment to designate special areas in Canada that are particularly susceptible to chemicals or high generators of chemicals. Two regions that stand out are the Arctic, which is particularly vulnerable, and the Great Lakes which are both vulnerable and a producer. It would accelerate activities on the virtual elimination of particular substances within those areas or come up with programs to reduce risk of vulnerable populations within those areas. Although CEPA has a national complexion it would give it regional priorities to accelerate industrial removal of substances or risk reduction or risk communication to people who are more susceptible in those regions.
It would give particular regions a priority for action over others.
Senator Cochrane: What do you think of that, Mr. Schwarcz?
Mr. Schwarcz: I do not advocate; I educate.
Senator Cochrane: I am sure you have an opinion.
Mr. Schwarcz: I have an opinion; CEPA works well. As Ms. Krantzberg mentioned, the tools are there. It is a question of applying them.
There is one thing that I would like to mention about the word ``chemical.'' The word ``chemical'' is not a dirty word. Everything in the world is made of chemicals, and I find so often in such discussions that it comes across as being a synonym for ``toxin'' or ``poison.'' You can look at the popular press and see how often the word ``chemical'' is preceded by an adjective that is almost always pejorative: ``toxic chemical,'' ``poisonous chemical,'' ``dangerous chemical,'' et cetera. The anti-oxidants I see you consuming in your second serving of fruit today contain as many chemicals as PFOAs, mercury or lead. I would like to be on the record that the word ``chemical'' is not a dirty word.
Senator Milne: Perhaps we should talk about newly created chemicals.
The Chairman: Even some of them are good.
Senator Mitchell: This is one of my first meetings on this committee. If this kind of presentation is indicative of what is to come, I am fortunate to be on this committee. Before I turn to something more substantive, what constitutes one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetables?
Mr. Schwarcz: That is a good question, and it comes up quite often. It usually is exactly what you think it is. It is one apple, one handful of grapes, one glass of juice. For vegetables, it is usually one-half a cup.
Senator Mitchell: I feel a great deal of frustration because in so many cases, the government seems to have little sense of urgency concerning these issues. I will be relatively pointed about this, because that is my nature. There seem to be reasons to delay that are not very good reasons. The reasons often mentioned are that it is an economic burden, it is impossible to do, or we are bringing in a new act.
Are you are aware of anything in the clean air act, which is probably an inappropriate use of the term ``clean air'' that is necessary to supplement or support what CEPA can already do?
You are saying that CEPA is adequate to deal with the problems we have without having to wait for a clean air act, and it is simply commitment and political will on the part of the government.
Ms. Krantzberg: I would agree with that statement.
Mr. Schwarcz: I would agree too.
Senator Mitchell: Secondly, with respect to the classic current delay, avoidance technique, which is that it will kill the economy, and we saw the current Minister of the Environment say last week, which is unbelievable, that if we were to approach Kyoto in the way that seems to be required, the Canadian economy would collapse like Russia's economy, quite denying the fact that the Russian economic problem was in part that they are not dealing with the environment but was really largely a banking issue. There is no relationship to reality when it comes to the Canadian situation, and I am certain that there is no evidence that that would occur in any way, shape or form.
In fact, the experience that you are discussing here and the examples that you have used underline that there is tremendous economic advantage to doing the environment properly. I am thinking of your case of the chemical company that found that it had to change something. Over and over again, there is no evidence that doing the environment properly hurts the economy. It is always to the contrary.
Ms. Krantzberg: I agree with you wholeheartedly. The notion that economy and environment are separate is a very old, out-dated and unsupported concept.
Senator Mitchell: It is anachronistic, 19th century thinking.
Ms. Krantzberg: Current contemporary, valid thought, comes from 1992, and it is called ``sustainable development or sustainability.'' It founds itself on three pillars. To have a society that is well off, you need economic vitality, environmental vitality and social well-being. Those three are achieved concurrently. Mr. Schwarcz said a few times that companies are smart. Chemistry is a smart thing. Companies can make a fortune by coming up with benign chemicals and revolutionize their industry. That is an economic opportunity. Let our companies have that economic opportunity for destructive innovation and change the way things to be benign. That is the world of green chemistry and the 21st century. It does not compromise the economy. Without a healthy environment, it is blatantly obvious that you will not have human health, and you cannot manufacture if you have to constantly treat resources as waste. Every time something goes up a stack, it costs money. A vast volume of literature demonstrates that corporate social responsibility saves money. Pitting one against the other is not honest.
Senator Mitchell: I thank you for that answer, which is perfect.
Ms. Krantzberg: I felt a little strongly about that topic.
Senator Mitchell: I do too, and obviously Senator Angus does as well. Now, if we could just get his leader to feel that way.
Uncertainty will not preclude action is a remarkable premise captured in CEPA. Is there any evidence of that premise being captured in government's approach to climate change?
I have always said that if we are wrong about climate change but we act as if it is occurring, we cannot hurt ourselves, but if we are wrong about climate change and not acting and in fact it is occurring, then we can really hurt ourselves. This principle does not seem to have been applied in the area of climate change. Am I wrong?
Ms. Krantzberg: You are right, and you have articulated what many call a ``no regrets'' policy. Let us work towards mitigation and adaptation. The international panel on climate change, with 2,000 scientists, believe it is human- induced. Some scientists disagree. That debate will last forever, and I do not want to get into that debate. However, if we mitigate climate change, it is a ``no regrets'' policy. If we start adapting to climate change in this region where we will see more severe weather, changing climate and agricultural patterns and forestry and so forth, it is a ``no regrets'' policy.
Senator Mitchell: The corollary of that is that even if you believe it is not generated by human activity —
The Chairman: I do not mean to be rude, but I want to get us on to the subject of PFCs and the way they are dealt with by CEPA, which does not get to climate change. I would ask you to confine yourself to that mechanism.
Senator Mitchell: Is there any contribution that these chemicals make to climate change?
Ms. Krantzberg: I do not believe so.
Senator Mitchell: I tried. I was late this morning because I was in a meeting with Mark Jaccard, and he makes a point that you cannot deal with climate change issues or emissions issues with voluntarily action or even with subsidies. His argument is that those individuals or companies that would do something because of subsidies would do it anyway, and it is impossible to find and encourage the people who would not do it with or without subsidies.
I think you are saying in this issue that you have to be explicit. You have said some voluntary action has had some success, but it also seems to me that you are arguing that you need to regulate standards and caps and be explicit.
Mr. Schwarcz: I would agree with that, as long as the issue is clear that it needs to be regulated and that scientific evidence exists that these things are harmful.
These chemicals have no effect on climate change, but climate change may have an effect on the way that these chemicals are disbursed in the environment.
Senator Mitchell: Then I do have an angle for my question. The question is adaptation. Even if they do not believe climate change is human made, if they are committed to the fact that it is occurring, they would at least be developing policy on adaptation. Often they will argue it is not human made. We agree it is happening, but it has happened over cycles. If you agree it is happening, why are you not doing something about adaptation?
Mr. Schwarcz: Whether it is human or natural does not really matter, because if you do something about it, you are still doing something about it, regardless the cause.
Senator Mitchell: At the very limit, if you say it is happening, you better be working on an adaptation.
Ms. Krantzberg: It is astonishing that there is so little happening in terms of planning for adaptation.
Senator Mitchell: I am from Alberta where we have certain air quality issues. I have not seen an update on these figures, but in the late 1990s Alberta probably had the highest rates of asthma in the country and the highest rate in the country of deaths of children from asthma.
Is there any relation between the oil industry and these kinds of compounds that would be specific to Alberta?
Mr. Schwarcz: I cannot think of any. In fact, fluorinated compounds are used as propellants in asthma inhalers because they are so inert.
Ms. Krantzberg: Fluorine is a halogen. It is so useful because it is so bulky, heavy and inert in the substances we have been talking about today. They are manufactured compounds; I do not believe they are related to oil.
Mr. Schwarcz: I was not aware that Alberta had such high rates of asthma.
Ms. Krantzberg: I thought Windsor was the asthma capital of Canada.
Senator Angus: People from Montreal go to Alberta because it is a dry climate.
Senator Mitchell: It may have changed, but there is a tremendously high rate of asthma in Alberta. There are more than 67 gas processing plants in the Edmonton area. One begins to wonder whether it is not something to do with the emissions from those plants.
Mr. Schwarcz: That could well be. The hydrocarbons emitted from that processing are respiratory irritants.
Senator Mitchell: You made the point that we overcame DDT and CFC as well as the problem with the ozone layer, although it seemed impossible. It is possible to do things in this area. That is very encouraging and has implications for global warming, which may have implications for how these other chemicals react.
The Chairman: You have made compelling arguments which, in some cases, I believe operate against each other.
Ms. Krantzberg and our witness last week said that PFCs do not belong there and, to the extent possible, we should get rid of them.
Mr. Schwarcz, you said something to the effect of, ``Let's not be Chicken Little and say the sky is falling and we will all die because this stuff is accumulating,'' because maybe we will not.
Mr. Schwarcz: We know that we will all die; the question is of what cause.
The Chairman: You have said that maybe this does not need to be fixed by draconian measures. You said we might be removing from commerce things that are very useful to us, that will not hurt us at all. I am trying to weigh the good advice that you have both given us to decide where we should be on this issue.
Specifically with respect to PFOs, we all agree that our report will comment about mercury, because the evidence is irrefutable. However, as regards PFOs and the urgency with which they must be dealt under CEPA, would we be right in assuming that it is, at the moment at least, less urgent?
Mr. Schwarcz: I believe so, yes, because I think it has been corrected. Measures have already been taken and DuPont is claiming 96 per cent reduction of their emissions of PFOA, and they have found alternative technologies for Teflon manufacture. I think it is going to be become a less important issue.
The Chairman: Ms. Krantzberg said that, despite 3M's success in that respect, there are other people in the world who have not followed suit and will continue to make the stuff with chains that have more than eight links. Why have they not followed suit?
Ms. Krantzberg: Perhaps companies like 3M see the writing on the wall and believe that if they do not do it on their own, they will be regulated, therefore they prefer to do it on their own. Companies like to do that; it is good product stewardship.
The Chairman: Or maybe they are good guys.
Ms. Krantzberg: It is good for business to demonstrate that you are doing things that reduce harm as compared to saying that it will be an economic burden. It gets you more shares in the marketplace. Perhaps these others companies do not see a threat of regulation and feel no urgency to do it. I cannot comment on that from a public point of view.
Mr. Schwarcz: Dupont and 3M can solve problems because they have multi-billions of dollars available to them. The smaller companies do not solve the problems immediately for themselves, but the solutions will cascade down when the technology is introduced.
Ms. Krantzberg: I agree with Mr. Mabury that these substances do not belong here and if there are alternatives to allow us to get rid of them, we should do it.
The evidence is not as compelling as for mercury, so the urgency is probably not as great, for reasons that Mr. Schwarcz mentioned in terms of it being phased out. However, I agree with Dr. Mabury that we should get rid of them
The Chairman: You are both familiar with CEPA. You have said, in answer to questions from Senator Angus and Senator Mitchell, that it is there and the shortcomings, if any, exist because it is not being applied in the way and to the degree that it should be applied.
There are mandatory timelines set out in Part 5 of CEPA, which have to do with controlling toxic substances, bearing in mind that ``toxic'' does not mean it will kill you.
Are those mandatory timelines, as they exist in CEPA, the right timelines? Do we need to look at that? Are they there and not being applied? Do they have the right hammers and levers to do what needs to be done?
Ms. Krantzberg: I think those timelines are quite a bit longer than they have to be. I think action can be accelerated much more quickly than the current timelines. Other witnesses have probably said the same thing.
They act has hammers and instruments. It is a good act, but there are weaknesses in its implementation and a slowness that is unnecessarily. Bureaucracy works in a complex way and I understand that, having worked for government for many years, but there is no reason the timelines under CEPA need to be as protracted as they are.
Mr. Schwarcz: I agree with that, because a shorter timeline forces action and, as we have seen with what DuPont has been able to do, you do things when you are pushed. I agree that shorter timelines can force companies to take action.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. You have been valuable witnesses. More questions may come up in our further deliberations and I hope you will permit us to write to you with such questions and that you will respond to them through our clerk.
Senator Angus: On a point of clarification, Ms. Krantzberg, you said in your paper that you have appeared before a committee of the other place. What committee was that?
Ms. Krantzberg: It was the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
Senator Angus: Was it on this subject?
Ms. Krantzberg: It was not on perfluorinated compounds, but on CEPA.
Senator Angus: Mr. Chairman, are we interacting with that committee? I had not realized there was this degree of duplication.
The Chairman: To a degree, yes, although that committee did not take the same approach that we have.
Are we interacting? No. The committee was studying the environment and CEPA at the same time and in a different way. The chairman and I met at the time and agreed that we would not travel down the same road or plough the same field, and that we would do our study in a different way, which is part of the reason we decided that we would do these two very specific studies. They did that and we are doing something else.
Thank you very much, witnesses. You have been extremely useful to us and we are grateful to you for you taking the time to be here.
The committee adjourned.