Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 7 - Evidence - February 27, 2014
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 27, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:29 a.m. to conduct a study on prescription pharmaceuticals in Canada (topic: The nature of unintended consequences in the use of prescription pharmaceuticals).
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
[English]
My name is Kelvin Ogilvie, a senator from Nova Scotia and chair of the committee. I will start the meeting by asking my colleagues to introduce themselves, starting on my right.
Senator Seidman: I'm Senator Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen from New Brunswick.
Senator Doyle: Norman Doyle, St. John's, Newfoundland.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Nancy Ruth from Toronto.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Good morning, I am Michel Rivard, senator from Quebec.
Senator Maltais: Good morning. Ghislain Maltais, senator from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dyck: Lillian Dyck from Saskatchewan.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia.
Senator Chaput: Maria Chaput, Manitoba.
Senator Eggleton: Art Eggleton, Toronto, and deputy chair of the committee.
The Chair: I also welcome our guests this morning.
I will remind everyone that we are dealing with phase 4 of our studies on prescription pharmaceuticals, and in this section of our studies, we are dealing with the nature of unintended consequences. At today's meeting, we are dealing with environmental concerns.
We welcome Karen Dodds, Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch at Environment Canada. Along with her for further advice is Joanne Parrott, Chief of Bioassays and Toxicity Assessments.
Ms. Dodds, would you please make your presentation?
[Translation]
Karen Dodds, Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Technology Branch, Environment Canada: Thank you for the invitation today to discuss aspects of your current study of potential unintended consequences of prescription drugs in Canada.
[English]
As the chair said, I am the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Technology Branch at Environment Canada, and I am here this morning on behalf of the whole department. As you may know, Environment Canada is a science-based department: Over half of our annual budget supports science activities, and scientific personnel represent over half of our work force, including research scientists. Dr. Parrott is one of our research scientists. We have physical scientists, engineers, biologists, chemists, meteorologists, technologists and science managers, among others.
Environment Canada's science is essential in order to provide the knowledge, data and tools needed to develop and evaluate Environment Canada's policies, programs and services so that Canadians can enjoy a clean, safe and sustainable environment.
In the Science and Technology Branch specifically, we perform much of the research and environmental monitoring that supports the departmental mandate. I was invited as a witness as a part of your study to speak to our research and monitoring related to pharmaceuticals as well as the Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products Surveillance Network.
Our research and monitoring includes the tracking of the environmental impacts of the broad array of chemicals and substances of concern, and there are certainly cases in which pharmaceuticals and personal care products fall into this broad characterization. This is due to potential harmful effects of exposure to these chemicals to the environment and to human health.
To help set the context, I would first like to provide a bit more general context of Environment Canada's areas of responsibilities related to science, risk assessment and risk management, and describe why we undertake the monitoring and research of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment.
In the scientific community, these products are often grouped together, so throughout my remarks, I will try and focus on pharmaceuticals but will also include reference to personal care products where applicable.
Part of Environment Canada's mandate is to reduce threats to Canadians and the environment posed by harmful substances and waste. Much of the science that supports this mandate happens through the Chemicals Management Plan, which Environment Canada has managed collaboratively with Health Canada since the program was launched in 2006. The main legislative authority for the Chemicals Management Plan is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, often just referred to as CEPA, 1999.
[Translation]
Research and monitoring conducted by Environment Canada plays an important role in delivering the chemicals management plan, and more generally of increasing our understanding of the presence and effects of substances in the environment that present some risk to the environment or human health. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are included in this work.
The purpose of this science is to support evidence-based regulatory and policy decision-making, so that appropriate actions can be taken to better protect the environment and the public from environmental threats.
[English]
So why are we concerned about these products at Environment Canada? An important question to set the context of our discussion today is what are pharmaceuticals and personal care products, or PPCPs, and what risks do we associate with the presence of any of these substances in the environment.
As you know, PPCPs comprise a broad diverse collection of thousands of chemical substances. Prescription pharmaceuticals are part of this category of chemicals, as are over-the-counter therapeutic drugs, veterinary drugs, vitamins, cosmetics, and things like sunscreen products.
When we normally think of pollutants, we're thinking of chemicals, and the effects of PPCPs can be quite different than those conventional pollutants. Pharmaceuticals are biologically active compounds and are purposefully developed to interact with cellular receptors at low concentrations and to cause specific biological effects. Otherwise, we wouldn't be taking them for human health.
This raises the concern that some PPCPs may be "endocrine-disrupting substances," which are substances that disrupt natural hormones and their activities in any organism, human or otherwise. Section 44 of CEPA mandates Environment Canada to conduct research on hormone-disrupting substances.
Pharmaceuticals are by design usually difficult to break down or metabolize in the human body. Consequently, pharmaceutical drugs can make their way into human waste and then into aquatic environments and soil, even through treated sewage and sewage sludge. Other than through human and animal waste, PPCPs can get into the environment through residues from pharmaceutical manufacturing and improper disposal of medications.
Our work and that of many others have shown that pharmaceuticals as well as personal care products are present in our water. Further, research suggests that certain drugs may cause ecological harm. The presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment raises questions about the occurrence, fate, effects and risks these biologically active compounds may present.
There are several issues that raise cause for concern. For example, there is the potential for them to enter the environment and the sewage systems, and the sewage systems are not designed to remove them. In addition, many PPCPs have unknown consequences once in the environment. They may contribute to cumulative environmental effects, which are those effects resulting from a combination and interaction of many human influences and impacts on the environment. Both of these factors increase the complexity of addressing the environmental challenge.
Furthermore, the number of pharmaceuticals and personal care products are growing due to demographics and market growth. There are more products in the marketplace, but at the same time, our ability to detect these products in the environment is improving. In addition to some antibiotics and steroids, over 165 individual pharmaceuticals and personal care products have been identified in water samples as of this year.
Environment Canada is conducting research and monitoring to better understand the potential risks associated with the presence of these products in the environment. This includes monitoring and surveillance of the occurrence and fate of specific chemicals across Canada in water, in sediments and in fish. It also includes research on the effects of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, for example, on fish and on shellfish, as well as research and development of tools to improve our ability to detect the chemicals in the environment and to better screen for any effects they may be having. The funding for much of this work is provided through the Chemicals Management Plan.
[Translation]
Environment Canada is providing scientific leadership and expertise under the chemicals management plan to assess the extent and effects of PPCPs in the Canadian environment. Environment Canada scientists are working with federal and provincial government departments and universities to develop and validate methods to measure pharmaceuticals in the environment and provide the scientific information needed for assessing their risks. For example, Environment Canada scientists have ongoing collaborations with Health Canada to conduct research on PPCPs identified by Health Canada as priority substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
[English]
The Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products Surveillance Network was implemented in 2008 within Environment Canada's water, science and technology directorate, a part of my branch, in order to coordinate our internal efforts around the research and monitoring of these products in the environment.
In the year prior to starting the network, we collaborated with several partners, including Health Canada, the Government of Ontario and the Canadian Water Network on a series of workshops to discuss personal care products and pharmaceuticals in the environment. And in response to this work we identified a need within Environment Canada to better organize our internal efforts to address the emerging and complex environmental challenges posed by these products. The PPCP Surveillance Network is inclusive of both of our experts and our monitoring sites. It operates under the umbrella of various programs and initiatives now at Environment Canada, including the Chemicals Management Plan, and Environment Canada's new risk-based approach to strengthen our water quality monitoring and surveillance program.
Environment Canada, with support from Health Canada, has monitored a list of approximately 120 of these products in surface waters in selected watersheds across Canada by leveraging the expertise and the work of the full network.
Although this network is internal to Environment Canada, we don't work in isolation. Partnership and collaboration are an essential part of all of the science undertaken at Environment Canada. Under the Chemicals Management Plan, for example, there are formal committees and structures to facilitate information-sharing and to establish the linkages that enable scientists to reach program and policy officials to help them in their program management and decision-making processes. The PPCP Surveillance Network within Environment Canada fits into this picture by bringing internal expertise together to the table, leveraging and making connections to work conducted under previous initiatives for continuity in our efforts, and providing a forum to strengthen linkages between the science, risk and regulatory experts that contribute to the overall success of the Chemicals Management Plan.
[Translation]
Environment Canada has done world-class research on the effects of individual compounds, and has developed sophisticated techniques for measurement of PPCPs in difficult-to-handle samples like sewage sludge and wastewaters. These individual compound assessments and ability to detect vanishingly-small (nano- and pico-gram) quantities of PPCPs are important. However, they are most relevant when paired with the assessment of real municipal wastewaters which contain a mixture of PPCPs.
[English]
Since many of the emerging contaminants of concern are found in products that routinely end up in waste water, monitoring and research has been undertaken under the Chemicals Management Plan to measure and identify the chemicals found in waste water, where these chemicals are entering waste water and in what quantities, and to assess the effects.
One of Environment Canada's unique scientific contributions has been the assessment of the real effects of municipal waste water effluents in real Canadian environments. These studies are one of the unique strengths of our department and are important as they take into account the mixture of PPCPs and other conventional contaminants in waste water, as well as complicating factors such as dilution and environmental variables including temperature, light and species sensitivities.
By assessing whether wild fish and invertebrates downstream of waste water effluent are surviving, growing and reproducing normally, we can say a lot about the effects of PPCP mixtures in the real environment. This work is important because in the environment organisms are exposed to mixtures of substances, never to single compounds.
Research and monitoring of this kind has verified that municipal effluents have neuroendocrine disrupting properties, among other effects, including immune-toxicity and genotoxicity capable of feminizing mussels and fish in Canadian ecosystems. Studies conducted by our scientists, such as Dr. Parrott, in collaboration with those at the Universities of Waterloo and New Brunswick at the Canadian Rivers Institute are the first Canadian studies to document the intersex condition in wild fish collected in rivers downstream of municipal waste water discharges. Similar findings have been found now in other of our studies and those of others.
A thorough search of the literature on pharmaceuticals in the environment will produce many examples of research by Environment Canada scientists. For example, between 2003 and 2010, Environment Canada scientists published 78 environmental science papers primarily focusing on endocrine disruption, a topic commonly associated with the pharmaceutical and personal care effects research.
To put this in context, Environment Canada was the top Canadian producer of papers primarily focusing on endocrine disruption, with about 25 per cent of the Canadian production of papers, followed by our colleagues from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the University of Guelph.
Overall, I hope I have adequately explained the role Environment Canada plays with respect to understanding the potential environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals. Our approach to this research is to address priority issues and environmental risks identified as part of the Chemicals Management Plan, which is backed by a very rigorous risk-assessment process.
The purpose and intended impact of the monitoring and research conducted by Environment Canada is to better inform our regulatory and environment protection decision-making. As we move forward, it will be important to continue to improve the sophistication of our testing and research techniques, to better equip ourselves to understand the cumulative effects of pharmaceuticals, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products more generally in the environment. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Dodds.
Senator Eggleton: In talking about the Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products Surveillance Network, you say that although this network is internal to Environment Canada, you do not work in isolation. Partnership and collaboration are an essential part of all the science undertaken at Environment Canada.
Do you have community organizations, NGOs that take an interest in these particular areas of pharmaceuticals and personal care products and how they affect our water?
Ms. Dodds: We do, and we do from several different levels. I made a number of references to our Chemicals Management Plan, and I will call it the umbrella under which we deal with chemicals of which pharmaceuticals and personal care products to us are a specific category of chemicals. So under the Chemicals Management Plan — and I may not get the names very accurate — I have a colleague, Nicole Davidson, who is much more closely related to the actual Chemicals Management Plan, but we have a stakeholder advisory, whether it's a council or a committee, which includes non-governmental organizations. I know Environmental Defence has been part of that in the past. There is also a scientific committee that is just composed of scientific experts, which provides advice to us. I know we have been part of expert meetings bringing people together here specifically on the pharmaceuticals and personal care products issue.
Senator Eggleton: On the question of the internal operation, as you call it, of the Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products Surveillance Network, why is it just internal? Why is this information not made more available to the public and to different organizations and academics and our community that could be further analyzing and writing on this?
Ms. Dodds: We encourage all of our scientists to publish. I mentioned 78 papers over about a seven-year time frame. All the information we collect does tend in the end to get into the public domain through scientific literature.
Environment Canada was one of the leading departments in moving in step with the government's initiative for open government on what we refer to as "open science" and working to make even raw data available as soon as possible. We need to take a sequenced approach to that because we simply don't have the resources to make all data available at the same time electronically, but we're endeavouring to share more and more data, not just through scientific publications but broadly.
Senator Eggleton: At this point, the surveillance network information is really internal, you say, so they don't get ready access to this for further studies.
Joanne Parrott, Chief, Bioassays and Toxicity Assessments, Environment Canada: There was actually a publication in 2014 that addressed some of the work of that network, the occurrence of antibiotic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti-fungal compounds in five wastewater treatment processes, so this data is out there. This is scientific literature, but it's available. The other thing that is important is that when Environment Canada does a study like this and they are looking at seasonal differences in treatment processes and what's coming into a treatment plant and what's going out, it's nice to have the whole story and you might not want piecemeal bits of the data as the monitoring goes on. This is a recent paper, but it is an example of what will be produced and what is being produced by that network.
Senator Eggleton: I tried to find some literature on all of this, and yes, there is some. It's American. You will notice that while you are here, and I appreciate that you are here, there isn't any other organization doing analysis of this whole effort on a Canadian basis. While I appreciate what you're doing, I wonder why there is such an absence of them. We did actually invite two organizations, but for some reason they're not here.
I will refer to one American publication in my final question because I think it's pertinent to what we're talking about. This was written by an organization in the States under the authorship of Mae Wu. She suggests five things to do, and this is particularly relevant to pharmaceuticals.
She says, first, improve drug design. Drugs should be designed so that the active parent compound, or its metabolites if they are biologically active, do not persist in the environment, so better design, taking into consideration the environment.
Second, tighten the FDA approval process — we could say the same thing about us — saying that they must properly consider environmental impacts by requiring thorough environmental assessments prior to granting approvals. That's for new drugs, I'm assuming.
Third, improve pharmaceutical production processes. Pharmaceutical production processes should be modified to generate less waste. Adoption of green chemistry principles would help reduce the generation of biologically active waste products.
Fourth, reduce unnecessary pharmaceutical use. We have had some discussion about that here already, overprescribing and over use of pharmaceuticals in both humans and animals are major contributors to the contamination problem.
Fifth, dispose of pharmaceuticals more safely. She says that there are groups in the United States that have begun creating take-back programs, drugstores, I guess, taking back your unfinished medication rather than flushing it down. She also suggests that pharmacies should educate patients about disposal practices when prescriptions are made.
There are five suggestions. What do you think of those in a Canadian context?
Ms. Dodds: In a Canadian context, I think anybody who is responsible for environmental protection regulation would be very supportive of measures that help prevent the release of any chemical that may be of concern into the environment. Certainly, although they're not our responsibility, all of what you said there are very worthwhile kinds of considerations.
I will note, and I didn't speak to it because again it's not our responsibility, that Health Canada, when they are approving drugs, does do on environmental assessment that is comparable to what we do under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. In developing the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, one of the things that was done was to recognize that some chemical products are regulated under other acts, but they should still have the same kind of consideration of what goes into the environment as under CEPA, so Health Canada does that.
Senator Seidman: I would like to go through your presentation and ask a few specific questions.
You make reference very often to research and monitoring. Given what you have presented in terms of research and monitoring to us, in a more specific way, you say that the important question to set the context of a discussion today has to do with not only the products but what risks are associated with the presence of these substances in our environment. Could you tell us, based on the research and monitoring that you're doing, what some of the important risks are that we might want to be aware of?
Ms. Dodds: From the category of pharmaceutical and personal care products writ large, and I will ask my colleague to correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think endocrine disruption is the major concern from these products. We're aware that there are concerns, so it is part of our responsibility to try to understand what those risks are. There have been very recent studies looking at these, and I have another scientific paper here that sort of looks at some of the big questions. One of them is to put this into context with some of the other chemicals that are entering our environment. Industry produces a lot of different chemicals, and Environment Canada has a number of different ways of monitoring for different chemicals in the environment through water, through air, in the sediments, in wildlife. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products would not rate your top five, probably not even your top 10 now. On issues such as nutrient loads in waters, if you're thinking of water, we're still concerned about runoff of phosphates from a variety of sources into the environment. Yes, pharmaceuticals and personal care products are obviously an issue. As a population, as we age and as the industry produces more and more products, we will want to make sure we know what they can do in the environment and where we might find them in the environment.
On the suggestions from the American scientists about better designs, et cetera, it would be wonderful if they could be achieved. You use it, you have your health benefit, and then no one else has to worry about it. We're not there yet.
Senator Seidman: Obviously these medications are critically important to people's health, so it's important to try to understand, from my understanding of this, the cumulative environmental effects and, as you put very nicely in your presentation, the combination and interaction of all of these chemicals that end up in the environment. In order to understand that, obviously the surveillance piece that you put out there becomes critically important, so I must ask about the surveillance piece again, which is what Senator Eggleton asked you about. I'd like to know how active that piece is. It's very hard to tell from the website. The surveillance network website was archived as of February 2014. I'm not sure how to understand that in the context of these issues. If you could help us understand that, that would be good.
Ms. Dodds: I made brief reference to a risk-based approach we're taking to water quality monitoring in general. Environment Canada does water quality monitoring at literally hundreds of sites across Canada. You're considering what the risks are, why should you be looking at the quality of water, population density, waste water treatment plants, density of industry, but we also want to know some of the northern rivers that might be cleaner; are they remaining relatively clean?
In our risk-based approach, we look at a number of different factors and we continue to add. As an example — and we can provide this in hard copy if senators would like — this is a graph showing levels of different pharmaceuticals and personal care products found. These are in parts per trillion. It's still at very low levels.
If our research that led to this is really a concern, then our monitoring system starts to do it on an automatic basis. There isn't enough research yet to say you should be doing this all the time, everywhere. It would not be good use of our resources, more like looking for a needle in a haystack in some cases. But obviously, when you have a dense population, an urban centre, you're more likely to find these products. This was done in the vicinity of Hamilton, a very densely populated area.
The Chair: We would like you to forward that to the clerk, if you would, please.
Ms. Dodds: I don't know if I could pass it around.
Senator Seidman: I'm still trying to understand. Is the surveillance network operational? The website isn't, but is the network itself operational?
Ms. Dodds: We have the scientists. We have the connections. Do we have a formal surveillance network?
Ms. Parrott: We have people under the Chemicals Management Plan looking at various waste water treatment plants across Canada, looking at the pharmaceuticals going in and coming out, looking at the efficiency of those plants. Right now, it's operating mainly under funding from the Chemicals Management Plan and measuring about 120 different pharmaceuticals and personal care products in these effluents, with the idea to get at seasonal variability, whether some treatment types are working better than others, and to confirm.
When we do a risk assessment for a pharmaceutical that's in commerce and used in Canada, there's always a point when you predict the environmental concentration. You predict how much people are taking in, dilute that with waste water and say we think this much would get in the river. But that's only a prediction. The surveillance network is going out and saying: Was that prediction true? For risk assessment, it's really important to say this is how we did the risk assessment, but now we actually want to check on it to see if our risk assessment methods are good. The network is working right now under CMP mainly.
Senator Seidman: I'm still trying to clarify, if I might. You talk about monitoring your research. If the surveillance network itself is not really operational, as it was originally devised in 2008, and clearly it's not, you do accumulate a lot of information, so how do you make that information available? How is it used, or is it used for policy development or regulation development in the country?
Ms. Dodds: Joanne explained a little of that and I've made some references as well. When our scientists do work, there are at least two lines of communication in terms of the scientific evidence that they collect. One is your typical production of scientific papers, which is what scientists typically have their focus on and is the norm in the scientific community. They go to conferences, share their data through papers and posters and produce scientific publications. As I noted in my remarks, there are 78 from Environment Canada so it's a bit of a surprise that Senator Eggleton wasn't able to find any Canadian ones, since we've had 78 specifically on this kind of issue.
There is also a train that does support decisions on policy and on regulations. The Chemicals Management Plan, which is funding this, has annual meetings of the scientists to discuss their findings and has an annual prioritization of what work still needs to happen. As Joanne said, we're still funding the work on detection of personal care products and pharmaceuticals in waste water effluent.
Ms. Parrott: And influents.
Ms. Dodds: What comes in and goes out of a waste water treatment plant.
Senator Seidman: I think I'll just leave it, but to me, if you have all this monitoring and research and so-called surveillance, there has to be a reason for it, so it has to eventually end up in some kind of policy development for the good of Canadians.
Ms. Dodds: Absolutely.
Senator Seidman: That is what I hope would come out of this kind of program.
Ms. Dodds: You're absolutely correct. For example, Environment Canada has regulations looking at pulp and paper effluents. It is very much the same kind of situation, a concern that that kind of industry is releasing chemicals of concern into the environment, and we should be regulating. You start with the science: Are there chemicals of concern? Yes. Are they at levels of concern? Yes. We then put regulations into place. What we're trying to say now with the personal care and pharmaceutical products is that they're not at a level that says you should put regulations into place. When you put them into place, you also want a way to actually have an impact.
Joanne was also trying to explain that waste water treatment plants are not all the same. They have different methods of treating the waste. So part of the work is what methods might be effective, knowing that historically waste water treatment plants were not designed to address chemicals; they were designed to address primarily microbial risk from infectious disease and things like that. They're becoming more and more sophisticated. But we wouldn't put regulations into place until we knew there was some way you could actually regulate.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I have two questions for you on differing subjects. I'm leaning more to the practical rather than the research-based and the papers, because I'd like to know how we can proceed now, and not 20 years from now, collecting data and all of this.
We have spoken before in this committee about collection days when communities encourage people to turn in their used pharmaceuticals. How effective do you think that is?
Ms. Dodds: As I said in response to what Senator Eggleton said about the comments made from the American author, I think those are wonderful suggestions. I wouldn't have any data to be able to say whether or not they're effective. I do know from past experience that typically people who have chronic health conditions tend to become very good at managing whatever they're using, because it becomes part of their lifestyle. As you're passing that chart around, you'll see caffeine. I think it's the second or third most noted. All of us are drinking caffeine, and we never even think about it if we pour a cup of coffee down the drain.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Exactly. That is something practical we could promote, and then perhaps Environment Canada might want to look at some kind of program to actually monitor an area where we're doing that kind of thing.
I want to understand how Environment Canada is working with provinces. I've seen on other committees and in other areas that what we do at the federal level is often either replicated or sometimes stopped at the provincial level. How do you find that work happening? Suppose you find something with your research. Do you communicate that to the provinces, who would then come down to actually proceeding with the measures?
Ms. Dodds: Thank you for that question. We do our two biggest areas of monitoring — water quality monitoring and air quality monitoring — in partnership with the provinces and territories. We have slightly different models. In some cases, we do the monitoring and the provinces support us, and they don't undertake it; and in other cases, they know the methods and the standards that we use, and they do it in the provinces and we take in all of the data. If you go to our website and look for water quality monitoring in general, or air quality monitoring, you can pull up graphs that show trends over time. That data is a combination of federal and provincial data, and that data is available to all of our colleagues at the provincial level and at the territorial level. It's a very good model to work through and with.
Senator Stewart Olsen: So it's shared.
My other concern, and something I want to be sure is actually happening, is that while Canada has very dense areas, and you seem to be monitoring that, most of our population, or a good number of our communities, are rural. They have wells and their own septic systems. I'd want to be assured that you were looking at that as well and not only cities where there is a public water system that's already treated and coming into your house from a reservoir, and waste disposal systems, which are treated as well. Rural Canada doesn't have that. I'm wondering what you do in that aspect.
Ms. Dodds: Again, working at the federal level, we respect the jurisdiction that the provincial level has, and we respect the jurisdiction that the municipal level has. It's actually at the municipal level where the responsibility is for the provision of potable, safe drinking water to the people of that municipality. Waste, I think, is more the responsibility of the provincial level. Again, Environment Canada will do broad, cross-Canada issues and inform local communities where we see something that pays attention to it or focuses our attention on a specific issue. To my knowledge, we don't do any monitoring of septic, because again that's not under our jurisdiction.
Senator Dyck: Thank you for your presentations this morning.
I'm going to follow up on a question that Senator Seidman asked about the use of your data in terms of setting regulations and policy development. I'm wondering one step further back. You indicated that there's a multitude of chemicals and pharmaceuticals out there. How do you choose which ones to focus on? You gave us that graph depicting measurements of commonly used products and chemicals, like antihistamines and so on. What are the products that we should be concerned about? How do people decide what are the priority areas? How do you pick out the priority areas or priority group of compounds?
Ms. Dodds: Again, that's a very good question, and it's not an easy one. Nicole Davidson, behind me, has played a key role in the Chemicals Management Plan, which started in 2006. One of the big issues internationally is how to address chemicals writ large, and then there's this clear recognition that you have to think about how you would prioritize them. There's a chemicals management program website, because we do it in collaboration with Health Canada, that explains.
Again, for a scientist, almost any compound can cause harm. It's the dose that causes the harm. Water can be lethal. If you drink too much water at one time, your electrolytes go out of balance and you can die. Then you have some of the chemicals in the environment that science, from early days, said you've got a concern about. Some of the first ones would be the heavy metals. People have heard that lead and mercury are a concern. Dr. Parrott, in her lab, has done this for different things. We know chemical A is toxic. What is the level that causes toxicity? Again, in a different group, we'll say that's the level that causes toxicity, so how do we integrate different lines of science to set a guideline or a regulation to say, "If the level is above this, you have to take action, or you're not in compliance with the law?" You have science to determine if it is present, at what levels, does it cause toxicity, and then developing a guideline that may also then move into a regulation.
Senator Dyck: You mentioned that you work in collaboration with Health Canada. Do you have a mechanism whereby Health Canada would say someone has reported or Environment Canada staff has noticed an increase in the trend of cancers in city X, and do they then ask you to investigate this increased rate of cancer? Is there any way that you could work together to sort out what is occurring in the water, the air or the food that would cause that human health effect? How do the different partners sort out how to work out a particular problem that people are facing?
Ms. Dodds: That happens in a number of different ways, Senator Dyck. It happens in a formal, structured way. For example, under the Chemicals Management Plan, folks are literally back and forth on a day-in, day-out basis about different scientific evaluations and results. I'm part of the committee of ADMs that meets a number of times a year to talk about things. Again, we have research scientists. If you do an analysis of our scientific papers, you'll see that there's a lot of collaborative work done. For example, you might say that in Toronto, air quality conditions are such, and can we map certain aspects of what we know about different chemicals in the air to certain health aspects? Again, epidemiologists from Health Canada or from the Public Health Agency or from universities will work with our scientists to try to unravel what is happening at those kinds of intersects between what we know about environmental quality and what the health people know about health issues.
Senator Dyck: I have one final question. I don't know which group it would involve. Let's say there was, for example, certain types of birds are a species at risk. Do you collaborate with those organizations where you determine, for example, bees or birds are dying off because of something that has occurred in the environment? Do you interact with them as well?
Ms. Dodds: Again, as part of my branch and part of Environment Canada we have the Canadian Wildlife Service, so we'll have those kinds of discussions, again, on an ongoing basis, about how you can determine associations between different aspects in the environment and wildlife health. Indeed, one of the groups in my branch is a wildlife toxicology group.
Senator Cordy: My question is a follow-up to Senator Dyck's, and Senator Seidman's also. You're translating the knowledge into policy if it's necessary. You said that working together, you've got the paper, research monitoring, and then you've got decisions on policy. Is this a seamless procedure?
Let's talk specifically about Health Canada, because we're dealing with our studies on pharmaceuticals here. Is it a seamless process, that you work continuously with Health Canada relating to chemicals in the water, as an example, resulting from pharmaceuticals, or do you conduct the research and then call Health Canada in and say, "We've discovered X, Y, and Z in the waters of wherever"?
Ms. Dodds: I'd say it's a pretty seamless process. Again, in terms of the organizational structure at Health Canada, there's a specific group that's focused on this kind of thing, so our people are pretty tightly knit. Again, it can happen in different ways. Dr. Parrott, as a research scientist, would have a relationship with the research personnel at Health Canada. I don't know about Joanne; she is more focused on aquatic toxicity, so she looks at fish and those kinds of things. Another one of our research scientists will work directly with Health Canada. But then again, more on the regulatory standards-setting side Nicole Davidson is here — again it's seamless there, and the data are back and forth and the discussions are back and forth on a constant basis.
Senator Cordy: How do you determine if it's time to take action on the research and development that you've done? You've said that so far the numbers are quite small, so how do you determine it? If there's a blip in one area, does it have to reach a certain percentage point where you say that we have to start looking at a policy here and bringing in regulations? In some cases I would think it can increase fairly quickly, whereas in others it can remain stagnant for a long period of time. How do you determine what the red flags are when it's time to call in Health Canada and to look at developing regulations in light of the research that you have done?
Ms. Dodds: That's an excellent question. I can go back in time to say that here is where we've done it, but again, one of the interesting questions is, how would you go forward in time to say how you would do it? Then again, there are Government of Canada policies about developing and establishing regulations. This isn't an Environment Canada policy; this applies to all government departments that might produce regulations. The first step is to determine whether there is a problem and document that there is a problem. Under federal policy for regulatory development, you have to consult with everybody who might be impacted. When you're actually thinking maybe you should go forward with a regulation, you do need then to talk to non-governmental organizations, to Canadians, to industry, to the provinces. There has to be a legal authority for being able to regulate in that area. There has to be a tool to enforce and the ability to enforce.
Again, it's a tool that can be used very effectively. I haven't been long at Environment Canada, but if you think about air quality and sulphur dioxide in the air, and in the early 1970s folks were really concerned about acid rain, Environment Canada did enact regulations and put monitoring in place. The level of sulphur dioxide in the air at the national level has declined hugely since the early 1970s. The flame retardant issue is again area where folks saw flame retardants present in the environment at levels that caused a concern. There were many discussions with industry about whether these are things that should be discontinued. Again, you can see that the level in the environment, after you've taken action, falls dramatically.
We've got the tools but there isn't sort of a black-and-white, when it hits this level you regulate. It is a policy development. Do you have a problem? Do you have ways of controlling the problem? What do the stakeholders say?
Senator Cordy: Do you work and collaborate with other countries in determining trends that may be happening internationally?
Ms. Dodds: Absolutely, again, both from the scientific perspective and the regulatory and policy perspective. Joanne would travel to international meetings and have ongoing relationships with scientists in different communities. With the Chemicals Management Plan we have an ongoing relationship with the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. We're regularly down there talking about what we see in the environment, what chemicals we're addressing, where are you, comparing both risk assessments and risk management. We do the same thing through the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which probably has upwards of 20 member countries now, or something like that.
Senator Cordy: Do you conduct research on new technologies for waste water treatment? As you said earlier, chemicals in drugs is a fairly new phenomenon when you look through it. Is that something that your department would do or would that be someone else who would look at that?
Ms. Dodds: The actual process of determining what is a technology and developing a technology is not part of the mandate of Environment Canada. As Joanne described, we would assess, through research at times, what is the effect of a technology. Lots of times, through our research, we can actually point to that sector and say, "This is more effective, and this is less effective."
Senator Cordy: This works and this doesn't. But you wouldn't be involved in the development of the technology?
Ms. Dodds: No. I mentioned the Canadian Water Network. I think there's a Canadian rivers network. The federal government and the provincial government had been developing a consortium on waste water treatment in southwestern Ontario. It's something that does pull a lot of people together, including Environment Canada.
The Chair: Dr. Parrott, that publication I think you referred to compared the effluents from different waste water treatments, did it not?
Ms. Parrott: Yes.
The Chair: That would be a response to the question. Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Senator Cordy has just asked the question on the new technologies for waste water treatment, which will allow me a preamble.
On my bottle of medicine, it says in small print: "If unused, return to your pharmacist." I think everyone should do that. That is the solution. I would like to draw a comparison to smokers. Cigarette packages have terrible pictures, but that does not prevent some people from smoking.
I live in an urban area and, in the Quebec City area, there is a highly efficient toxic waste incinerator. The ashes are collected and stored in a designated landfill site, which meets environmental standards and has a geothermal membrane. The result is a huge green bag. Even the methane from those ashes is collected and used.
If I choose the worst option, which would be to throw the pills down the drain, they will go to a sewage treatment plant and, after a second biological treatment, the suspended solids are collected and sent to the incinerator. Then, before the water is sent back into the river, it receives an ultraviolet treatment. However, despite all that, we cannot swim in the water because too much fecal matter is left.
We can see that the only logical options is to return them to pharmacists. You cannot do anything else with expired drugs, because of the chemical, toxic or other substances they contain.
[English]
Ms. Dodds: The benefits of having the pharmaceuticals go back to the pharmacy are that you could have a controlled process for waste treatment. One of the questions I would ask now is what the pharmacist is going to do with it.
In the time I have been at Environment Canada — my background is that I am a scientist and was a research scientist — we increasingly cycle different chemicals of concern, and we need to know and be conscious of where things are going and what's happening to them. Again, I do not know of —
The Chair: Perhaps I can interject. We are going to have witnesses from the pharmacies and relative to the pharmaceutical industry and the indication is that the pharmacists return it to the industry, which is responsible for disposal. It's an excellent question but if you don't mind, senator, we will wait until we get the experts in that category to deal with it.
Ms. Dodds: From the environment perspective, we talk about a full life cycle management of any of these products that present concern.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: Your role is to give us advice, but the municipal and provincial jurisdictions are responsible for raising awareness.
[English]
The Chair: You will indeed find that recommendation in one or two of our earlier reports in this study looking at pharmaceuticals from a life cycle perspective.
Senator Nancy Ruth: My questions are all over the map, but in the end they're going to end up with citizens' participation. You spoke about acid rain. We know asbestos has been closed down by this government and there was so much information for so many decades on asbestos and nothing happened. I know the role of politics, but why is it that all this information — and there were endless scientific papers on asbestos and related diseases — didn't move into public policy faster?
I will also add that business about the pulp and paper industry. I can remember coming to Ottawa as child when my father was an MP. This was in the 1940s and the Eddy Mills were just across the river. You could see the effluent. I had never seen a river the size of this and all this stuff going down, but it got closed down and moved. How does it work and why does it sometimes take so long?
The Chair: I want to get back to pharmaceuticals here at some point. We have different issues relative to the same question so if you could give your point of view concisely?
Ms. Dodds: Under the Chemicals Management Plan, one of the huge challenges everywhere around the world is how to address what are called "legacy chemicals." Most modern countries like Canada have now moved so that before you can market a chemical in your country it goes through a chemical evaluation looking at human health concerns and environmental or ecological concerns.
We have a huge number of chemicals that have been in use for centuries. For some, like asbestos, early evidence was there. They've been taken action on. They wouldn't be allowed to be used in Canada. For others, it is a matter of where they fall in that prioritization list, and we have information on our website about how that has been done.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Senator Eggleton raised the issue of citizen participation and for me this has to do with some kind of set baseline for public health in communities on water, air, garbage whatever it is. How do we involve citizens in being more responsible for the chemicals on your graph? How do we use school boards, how do we teach kids to teach their parents to teach their grandparents? This is a question of the relationship of the governments down the chain, but is there much public push? If you tell me there are scientific papers written and that scientists meet together and decide what still needs to happen, then I want to ask when, who is going to do it, how you push it down that food chain into the schools and what's the responsibility of your section in it?
Ms. Dodds: Again, the responsibility of my branch is to do the science, whether it's research or monitoring, and to provide that information to those that make policy and decisions, some of which are made about chemical products. But even Environment Canada doesn't have a responsibility to work with school boards. You will see issues about chemicals, air quality and water quality on websites.
[Translation]
We want awareness to be raised about scientific data; we want the data to be disseminated.
[English]
But we need to work with colleagues in other departments and at other levels of government to address the kinds of questions you are raising, which are very good.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I guess I will withdraw because I don't think I will get an answer.
The Chair: I think we're going down a long policy line, senator, and it's a complex situation. We would hope to get a sense of where pharmaceutical products and their residues lie within this environmental issue, which is where we started, but thank you very much for those questions.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: We have talked a lot about the poisoning of humans by pharmaceutical products. Is that the only cause? Can human beings who do not take any drugs have pharmaceutical products in their system because of the food they eat, in light of what happens with the animals and other products that we consume in our diets?
The chair takes no drugs. He is in perfect health. Does he run the risk of having toxic products in his blood because he has some chicken once in a while, a salad or anything like that? Can he be as poisoned as I am, although I am in the lead with the metformin for my diabetes?
[English]
Ms. Dodds: That is a good question and there is an undertaking that has been in place since 2007 where primarily Health Canada and the Public Health Agency have worked with Statistics Canada under a Canadian health survey. There is what's called the Canadian Health Measures Survey. Working with Statistics Canada, the statistical design is rigorous, with different cohorts across Canada and it's done every three or four years. It was oversubscribed, meaning more Canadians wanted to become involved than we had the capacity to include. They would take physical samples — it might be some urine, blood or hair — and look at those samples for different chemicals that both Health Canada and Environment Canada would say that these are of concern.
This is a wonderful way of saying that, irrespective of where you live and what your own personal behaviours might be, what are Canadians exposed to and what then rises up as a concern? It took probably a decade to design and refine, and I think we're now into at least cycle three. Environment Canada is responsible for looking at the data that come from those physical measures and reporting on them with Statistics Canada.
The Chair: Dr. Dodds, the issue that we're trying to get at is the unintended consequences of prescription pharmaceutical use. Obviously, the determination of the amount of them or their degradation products in the environment is part of that issue, and you have touched on that.
One of the concerns in terms of an unintended consequence that we all are aware of — and we've had expert testimony in this regard — is that the overuse and misuse of prescription pharmaceuticals has led to resistance — particularly let's focus on antibiotics — in micro-organisms. We know that antibiotic resistance has occurred with regard to a wide range of important pharmaceuticals.
The question I have in this regard, with regard to Environment Canada and its monitoring: Do you select specific, let's say, bacteria that are known to occur in the environment and examine any of those for resistance to specific prescription antibiotics whose residues you are identifying in water?
Ms. Dodds: I may need to ask for a little patience in the answer. Our concern is not primarily human health, because we have our colleagues at Health Canada who do that. Resistance to antibiotics which are useful in human health is the domain of Health Canada or the Public Health Agency. Our domain is not domesticated animals; our domain is wildlife. Antibiotics are not used for wildlife; they're wild. For domesticated animals, if they are in agriculture, the health of those animals is the responsibility of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Again, because I've got a science background and science experience, I can tell you that Health Canada, the Public Health Agency and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, do work on that kind of issue.
At Environment Canada we are not interested necessarily in antibiotic resistance, but we are interested in tools that tell us whether we are getting unintended effects from a number of different kinds of chemical compounds, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products. We're increasingly using a science called genomics, so looking at the genetics of different species and looking at whether we are seeing unintended, unexplainable effects. Again, we wouldn't specifically be looking at antibiotics, but it might be an expression through which we would find some of that.
The Chair: That clarifies the lines of responsibility for the specific outcome issue. Thank you for that. I think you have given sufficient examples so that I know what the answer is to this question, as well as in the document you passed around. In fact, it was noteworthy that the diabetic product was the highest of the lot in there. Apparently, it's fairly stable as it passes through the system.
In looking at the various domestic consumption chemicals, the prescription pharmaceuticals on the one hand and personal care products on the other, I would have anticipated that the volume of chemicals from personal care products would have been substantially higher than that of prescription pharmaceuticals in the environment, and I think your data confirms that roughly that is the case.
You've made the point about the total chemical load and the diverse sources that that comes from, and you gave us a chart in which you identified materials in parts per trillion, which gives me a clear perspective on concentrations, at least, in the environment.
So I don't think, unless there is something you want to add to that, that I will pursue that any further. You have given us some data there. Is there anything else you would like to add on that?
Ms. Dodds: I'm sure you've heard from folks on the human health side that the reason scientists writ large are concerned about hormone disrupters or endocrine disrupters is because you are dealing with a different kind of impact than toxicity itself. Hormones are active at very low levels. Yes, we find these present at very low levels but, yes, we continue to see whether there are effects.
The Chair: Dr. Parrott, the publication you had there is an interesting one. We couldn't find that publication on the website. Is there an intent that recent publications are going to appear on the website?
Ms. Parrott: Yes. That is what we do with them when we are encouraged to publish. We send up what we call a science alert that this is coming out of a certain program, and then we put them on our websites with our profiles, to say so-and-so has expertise in this area and these are the latest publications.
You could probably find this now in a search on Scopus or something like that, with key words of "waste water" and "anti-inflammatory." This is a good way of presenting the data because it is peer reviewed, so something like this has been presented to other scientists.
The Chair: I think that's excellent. My question is not to challenge the quality of it. It's an excellent publication. In fact, it is a very informative publication.
I would have thought that would have been the kind of thing you would have right up on your website for easy access, as opposed to having to do the normal scientific literature search process. My point is to make it more accessible through your own website as opposed to our having to do the normal wide-ranging search.
Ms. Dodds: At Environment Canada, we're at the forefront in terms of supporting what's called open science and open data. This looks to me like it's an Elsevier publication. Once it's published in Elsevier, Elsevier owns the intellectual property or copyright.
The Chair: Right, but a link to it, with a summary, and there will be a lot of people going to your website who are not scientists, who wouldn't know how to find it, municipalities and so on. It is, from my quick glance at it, very useful. It is not only a scientific publication but it's a very useful scientific publication. I'm simply going to urge you to move forward in your recognition of your potential Canadian clientele with regard to wanting to know what Environment Canada is doing.
Ms. Dodds: Senator Ogilvie, I'm thrilled to have you say that, because I'm encouraging our scientists to make sure they document all of their publications so that we can provide all of their publications.
The Chair: Perhaps, Dr. Dodds, you could insist upon it in terms of a linkage, at least.
Looking at your Chemicals Management Plan, the list of chemicals, on a quick run-through I didn't see any prescription pharmaceuticals listed specifically, perhaps because of the quantities or whatever.
Ms. Dodds: It is regulated under the Food and Drugs Act by Health Canada.
The Chair: So even data that you might collect would appear elsewhere?
Ms. Dodds: Could I bring my colleague Nicole Davidson to the table?
The Chair: Certainly. The question is: Where could the data on prescription pharmaceuticals that you collect appear, since it isn't on that chemical management list?
Nicole Davidson, Director, Emerging Priorities Division, Environment Canada: The data itself are often generated to support our regulatory programs, so for substances that have undergone a risk assessment, those risk assessments are on our website. The decisions are published in the Canada Gazette, and if a substance that's a pharmaceutical or sometimes the personal care products have fallen within our list of priority substances we are looking at under the Chemicals Management Plan, there have been some substances that are used in pharmaceuticals and personal care products. There have also been substances that have pharmaceutical uses but also other uses that have gone through that process. Those risk assessments and the data that was used to make those decisions are publicly available and on our website.
Not all chemicals get prioritized, but there is a list. Some of the existing substances under the new substances program — these are substances that have undergone a review prior to their import or manufacture, so they fall under the Food and Drugs Act, the pharmaceuticals and personal care products — do undergo an environmental review. Those are not posted on the websites due to confidential business information, but summaries are routinely put up on the website as well under the Chemicals Management Plan to give an outline of the data that was used in the summary.
Those regulatory decisions then get published, not the raw data, but the data that was used in the decisions.
The Chair: I will not pursue that because you have given me the category I was looking for, and now I understand why the chemicals wind up on that particular list.
You dealt with the decision informing policy decision, and I understand how complex that is. In this area in particular, given the number of jurisdictions, I think Canadians aren't aware of how much authority municipalities have and how jealously they guard that even versus their own provinces versus the federal system, so policy development is not an easy issue.
I will ask it in the sense of a best practices question: If we take the analysis of water going into and out of waste treatment facilities, which cover systems from old systems to more modern systems, obviously, the results would show some significant differences between those plants, as the publication indicates. I heard you clearly say that you analyze things that are in the environment, but one of the outcomes will be to see differences in particular chemicals and in particular situations. You might be able to attribute those differences to something that is being deliberately done, or even accidently done, which led to an improvement in the quantities of materials in the environment.
Is there a mechanism by which you, after careful review of the data, could make recommendations to authorities across the country with regard to what appears to be best practices in how certain systems are dealing with certain chemicals that enter the environment?
Ms. Dodds: I know that Environment Canada has developed and put into place wastewater treatment regulations, and we had to work closely with provinces and territories and others on that. Again, we would provide information. We had a recent discussion about endocrine disrupting substances, and there is some information about the different treatments, and so we do let our colleagues know that this looks to be effective here. Because we're not at every wastewater treatment plant at all times, we're obviously cautious about information and how it's shared.
The Chair: If you observed something dramatic, you have the vehicles by which you could disseminate?
Ms. Dodds: Yes.
Senator Eggleton: You said that the chart that you passed around is low levels of the various substances that are noted, and this was done in Lake Ontario somewhere near Hamilton.
There was a study which involves Lake Michigan, and this was done by the University of Wisconsin, out of Milwaukee. The title of it is: A Growing Concern: Prescription Drugs in the Great Lakes. They discovered in the study that prescription drugs are not only present but are remaining in relatively high concentrations instead of being diluted, as many had previously thought was the case.
They go on to say,
In a body of water like the Great Lakes, you'd expect dilution would kick in and decrease concentrations, and that was not the case here.
They go on to say:
. . . chemicals are settling into lake waters for much longer than they probably should. Low-level but consistent exposure to chemicals may prove to be problematic but since there have been no long-term health or environmental effect studies done on pharmaceutical and chemical-laced waters, scientists cannot yet determine how any of us, wildlife included, will be affected
Finally, here is one other quote from this document related to the question of wastewater treatment plants that we have been talking about:
Unfortunately, many of our wastewater treatment plants are just not designed to remove these sorts as chemicals.
Could you comment on that study?
Ms. Dodds: When we think about pollution writ large in the Great Lakes, it's a major intense area of Environment Canada research, monitoring and policy. We have agreements with Ontario and the U.S., and we have individuals that look at what's called the hydrology of the lake, so you can see where water moves. You would expect to see different dilution effects, depending on where something happens, because the movement of water isn't always the same, so even from some satellite pictures, you can see remarkable shots showing a plume of some of the harmful algal blooms. I can't comment on the specifics but to say, yes, it's not like once you've dropped something into the lake, it's instantly diluted. It very much depends on what and where and what the water is doing.
We are always concerned about whether something accumulates in the environment or in an organism, and also the issue I raised about cumulative effects. Pharmaceutical products in the environment are not the only factor impacting wildlife in the environment. You have different chemicals, temperatures and nutrients, so those points are all very legitimate and things that we also look at whenever we are looking at a chemical.
Senator Eggleton: What about the absence of long-term environmental effects studies. Shouldn't they be done?
Ms. Dodds: Yes.
Senator Eggleton: What's your role in that?
Ms. Parrott: That's probably one of the strengths of Environment Canada as a whole. We have environmental effects monitoring studies that go into situations into a river, and say: Are the fish healthy? Are the invertebrates living in the sediments there? Have the fish got enough to eat? It's one of the ways we can get at the question of whether there are effects from these mixtures of pharmaceuticals. So you have a mixed wastewater going into a river, you can measure that and you can document all those bars, but often you won't know what on earth that means.
But if you go into that river, sample some fish and see how they are growing, dissect them, look at their testes or ovaries and livers and compare those to the same species of fish from upstream or from where the effluent is not entering the river, you can say a lot about whether that mixture is having an effect.
In some cases, such as in the Grand River, they are seeing differences in fish downstream from waste water effluent, but in some cases where waste waters enter a river, they're not. So even though you have that mixture going in, maybe it's okay.
In a sense, it's weighing up the chemistry, finding these things, and then asking the biological question: Does it seem to matter to those organisms?
Senator Eggleton: This is a Great Lake that we're talking about here, but have you seen this study from the University of Wisconsin?
Ms. Parrott: I have seen that study, yes.
Senator Eggleton: They say there are some high concentrations, so some more work is needed on this.
Ms. Parrott: I think the question would be what they mean by "high concentrations." I would like to see a further study, then mimicking or taking those concentrations and running them through a controlled experiment, which is what we do, to see if there are effects.
That's some of the work we are doing with the mixtures, because getting at individual pharmaceutical by pharmaceutical is very different when you have 3,000 in commerce and maybe 150 that we can measure. Looking at it in the whole environmental picture might be the way of moving forward.
The Chair: We know very well, since we're dealing with prescription pharmaceuticals, that it's all about the dose. The numbers are important, and one person's interpretation of "high" — what we really need are the numbers. As you've described, and what Senator Eggleton has been trying to get at, is: What is the number interpreted by someone as being "high"? We don't have that in this particular case.
The final thing I want to come back to is that I understand the issue of copyright and so on; people can't just gain access to a particular publication without a subscription or via their library that may have a subscription or something like that. But information such as in that publication is quite interesting. I want to encourage you to find ways to have at least a summary of what you've done in this regard on your website and to make it available to Canadians, because it's not only informative but an extremely good example of Environment Canada's work in this area that deals with a number of the kinds of things the senators have been asking in terms of whether you are doing X. We couldn't find it, because we were looking through your website.
I don't have the authority to encourage you on behalf of the committee, but I personally want to encourage you to consider that option.
Ms. Dodds: I'll check to see how easily accessible that is. If you try a search on "EC science experts," hopefully you would be able to find something. I don't know whether Joanne even has a picture of her specialty — and then select "publications" with the abstract. Again, we'll encourage that.
The Chair: I'll come back to the point: Canadians will go to Environment Canada's website.
Ms. Dodds: And check on searchability.
The Chair: And search "science experts" or whatever. Canadians are not going to follow the normal scientific route, necessarily, to get at the access. The easier we make it available, the better. That's my point, and I won't belabour it any further.
On that, I thank my colleagues again, and I thank you, Dr. Parrott and Ms. Dodds, for helping us with what is a complex issue — the environmental impact of any chemical, let alone prescription pharmaceuticals.
(The committee adjourned.)