Frederick Street unsafe - expert

By BEVERLEY WARE / Cape Breton Bureau
Chronicle Herald, Sunday, December 6, 1998

Sydney - A government-sponsored study that says the health of residents living beside the coke ovens in Sydney is not at risk is "inadequate and insufficient," says an independent consultant.

Industrial hygienist Roger Dixon says it's not safe for the Frederick Street residents to keep living there.

Mr. Dixon works for the Toronto-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health. He was hired by the Sierra Club of Canada, a national environmental group, to conduct a peer review of the government-sponsored Cantox study released last summer.

That report concluded Frederick Street residents face no serious health risk by living beside the coke-oven site, which is heavily contaminated with carcinogens and heavy metals.

"We find that the methodologies and environmental data used in this health-risk assessment are inadequate and insufficient to allow the author's conclusion (that residents are not at risk)," Mr. Dixon writes in a preliminary draft of his report.

He visited the area Thursday and met residents who told them they experience headaches, nausea, and sore throats and eyes.

Mr. Dixon calls it "disturbing" that the Cantox report attributed such conditions to other causes - for example, that the burning eyes, sore throats and nausea residents experienced last spring, when contaminated soil was being dug up, coincided with flu season.

He says the Cantox report makes statements without the scientific data to back them up. Juanita McKenzie, who has lived on Frederick Street for 12 years, said conditions have been 'terrible."

Black liquid containing arsenic, sulphur and lead, started oozing out of the ground in a neighbour's yard last spring, "and it's still seeping out."

She's been hospitalized twice with intestinal problems, and has headaches almost every day.

She was "wild" when the Cantox report concluded residents were safe. She hopes the federal and provincial governments will heed Mr. Dixon's report, but she doubts it.

"I don't think they care, I really don't think they care. But they can leave. We can't."

The provincial Health and Environment departments referred questions to Transportation and Public Works. Spokesman Chris Welner said the government is standing by its report unless there's something to counter it.

The province has not discounted residents' concerns, Mr. Welner said. "Any action we take will be done in consultation with them and using scientific data as a basis for those decisions."

Mr. Dixon will present his final report in January.

Dear Sierra Club: Quote - Transport and Public Works spokesman Chris Welner(Cape Breton Bureau Chronicle Herald, Sunday, December 6, 1998): .....The province has not discounted residents' concerns, Mr. Welner said. "Any action we take will be done in consultation with them and using scientific data as a basis for those decisions." In this matter so far, "scientific data" has been the basis for a series of non-decisions. No doubt Mr. Welner will explain what has changed here, and disclose exactly what scientific data he is referring to - including a clear statement of the data's credibility and utility in a medically proven sense. ~Roger Dixon

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