[Parker-L] [PBD 7-15-01] Maybe seals caused the arsenic

[Parker Donham]

15 July 2001
Halifax Daily News
Parker Barss Donham


	Let's not be hasty.

	Just because the Sydney Steel coke ovens dumped more than 700,000
tonnes of arsenic-laden sludge into Sydney Harbour over the last 100
years, there's no scientific proof this played any part in the unsafe
levels of arsenic showing up in area children.

	Just because the steel plant and the coke ovens showered adjacent
neighbourhoods with additional thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing
chemicals every year for a century is no reason to think this has
anything whatever to do with Sydney residents having the highest
cancer rates in Canada.

	Just because toxic slag from the steel plant was used as fill for
residential construction in surrounding neighbourhoods for decades is
no cause for leaping to wild conclusions about possible ill-effects on
public health.

	Just because federal and provincial health inspectors have checked
residents for only two of the twenty-odd notorious carcinogens Sysco
spewed into the air and groundwater for the last 100 years, and just
because their tests come up positive only if exposure occurred within
the last 72 hours, is no reason to suspect public health and safety
are not uppermost in their minds.

	Just because inspectors didn't bother to test soil samples in
Sydney's middle-class North End, far closer to the tar ponds than
Whitney Pier, is no reason to think they were trying to confine the
problem to the poor, marginalized neighbourhoods of the Pier.

	Just because the Nova Scotia Department of the Environment let
Sobey's and its affiliate, Empire Theatres, build a supermarket and a
theatre complex on filled-in sections of the tar ponds estuary doesn't
mean they weren't being vigilant.

	People have been quick to ridicule Health Minister Jamie Muir for
insisting dangerous levels of arsenic found in five Sydney children
"may have absolutely nothing to do with the tar ponds."

	Muir is a minister of the Crown. He has certain responsibilities. He
can't go running off half-cocked the first time some radical
environmentalist dreams up a cockamamie theory that the worst
industrial waste site in Canada -- with 35 times more pollution than
the Love Canal -- is harming the people living in its midst.

	Oh, sure. Bring out the pregnant mothers. Parade the tainted toddlers
before the cameras. Go for the cheap shot. Tug on the heartstrings.

	As Muir was quite right to point out, some of the poisoned babies
live more than a kilometre from the tar ponds. A kilometre! That's a
thousand metres away -- almost a three-minute walk!

	Muir's government was elected on a solemn promise not to spend any
money in Cape Breton. He can't start writing cheques, moving people
hither and yon, the first time someone has a beef about yellow
cancer-causing goo seeping into their basements from a civil service
steel mill.

	What's he supposed to do? Move everyone in the whole Cape Breton
Regional Municipality into Point Pleasant Park? Who's going to pay for
that? Not those good-for-nothing steelworkers or coal miners, that's
for sure.

	This province is practically bankrupt. The worst thing Muir could do
would be to act precipitously and move families before he has all the
facts about what's poisoning their babies.

	At this point, the popular notion that the coke ovens and the tar
ponds are affecting public health is nothing more than a theory.
Documents obtained under the Access to Inanity Act show Muir's
department is actively exploring several other possibilities:

	-- <B> The Bruno Marcocchio-Mafia Connection <N> -- Investigators
suspect Bruno Marcocchio may only be posing as a mild-mannered
environmentalist truly concerned about pollution. He may actually be
fronting for a Sicilian drug cartel anxious to gain control of the
Sysco piers, whose heavy lift cranes would be ideal for importing
tonnes of drugs into North America. RCMP labs are checking to see
whether baby food in Sydney supermarkets was salted with arsenic to
sow panic.

	-- <B> The Seal Theory <N> -- Federal authorities banned lobster
fishing in Sydney Harbour 25 years ago. (They may be slow to protect
babies, but when lobsters are threatened, bureaucrats act decisively.)
Cod eat lobster larvae. Seals eat tonnes upon tonnes of cod, and they
are known to defecate right in the water. Arsenic and other pollutants
could be working their way up the food chain in this insidious manner.
Children swimming and even playing along the water's edge could be
exposed though their skin. DFO is weighing the merits of a seal cull
to protect the children of Whitney Pier -- but fearful of a backlash
from animal rights groups.

	-- <B> The Blowing Smoke Theory <N> -- Second hand smoke is known to
contain arsenic. The provincial cabinet occasionally meets in the
provincial building on Prince Street, less than a kilometre from where
some of the poisoned children live! Coincidence? Investigators think
not, especially in light of cabinet's recent performance. They suspect
the youngsters may have been exposed to fumes from whatever Muir and
cabinet colleague Jane Purves have been smoking.

	To find the real culprit will require more testing. To act before all
the facts are known would be to put political expediency ahead of
science.

	<I> Copyright (C) 2001 by Parker Barss Donham (parker@donham.org).
All rights reserved. <N>


-- 
  Parker Barss Donham
  8190 Kempt Head Road, Kempt Head, Nova Scotia, B1X-1R8
  Phone: (902) 674-2953;  Halifax: (902) 423-7714