The Dominion - John Schertow

Bitter Sweet or Toxic?

hillarybain — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:37:27 +0000

Indigenous people, diabetes and the burden of pollution

WINNIPEG—Diabetes is now widely regarded as the 21st century epidemic. With some 284 million people currently diagnosed with the disease, it’s certainly no exaggeration—least of all for Indigenous people.

According to the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples Report by the United Nations, more than 50 per cent of Indigenous adults over the age of 35 have Type 2 Diabetes, “and these numbers are predicted to rise.”

Diabetes is referred to as a "lifestyle disease," its rampant spread believed to be caused by obesity due to our increased reliance on the western diet (also known as the "meat-sweet" diet) and our avoidance of regular exercise.

While these may certainly be contributing factors, there is growing evidence that diabetes is closely linked with our environment. More than a dozen studies have been published that show a connection between Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); carcinogenic hydrocarbons known as Dioxins; and the "violently deadly" synthetic pesticide, DDT and higher rates of the disease.

“If it is the POPs, not the obesity that causes diabetes, this is really striking if true,” says Dr. David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany.

One out of four Indigenous adults living on reserves in Canada have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, the most common form of diabetes. The prevalence of the disease appears to be so great that the number of new cases being diagnosed in Canada may exceed the growth of the Indigenous population. It’s no longer uncommon to find children as young as three with the disease. According to government statistics, 27 per cent of all Indigenous people in Canada will have Type 2 Diabetes in the next ten years.

Sandy Lake First Nation, in the Sioux Lookout Zone of northern Ontario, has all but met the mark. A March 2009 study co-authored by Dr. Stewart Harris found that 26 per cent of the community has the disease, the highest recorded rate of diabetes in Canada. With a population of 2,500, the northern Cree community was recently described as an “epicentre” of the epidemic.

There has been little research on the levels of persistent organic pollutants in Sandy Lake; however, according to the First Nations Environmental Health Innovation Network, several neighboring communities who also have high rates of diabetes, like Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, are known to have elevated levels of PCBs in their blood.

The Mohawk community of Akwesasne has its own conflict with diabetes and exposure to POPs. Located across the New York-Ontario-Quebec borders along the St. Lawrence River, three aluminum foundries upriver from the reserve dumped PCBs into the river for decades, contaminating the water, soil, and vegetation.

For many years, Dr. Carpenter has been involved in the study of Adult Mohawks at Akwesasne. Most recently, in 2007, he took part in a study to examine the diabetes/pollution link in the community. “Our study of adult Mohawks showed a striking elevation in rates of diabetes in relation to blood levels of three persistent organic pollutants, DDE, the metabolite of DDT, hexachlorobenzene and PCBs,” Dr. Carpenter explains. “Our results are quite compatible with those of Lee et al.”

In 2006, Dr. Dae-Hee Lee and her colleagues showed that people with the highest rate of exposure to POPs were roughly 38 times more likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest rate of exposure. Further, “they showed that people who were obese but did not have high levels of POPs were not at increased risk of developing diabetes,” continues Dr. Carpenter. “Probably the reason most people get obese is that they eat too many animal fats, and this is where the POPs are.”

The dietary source of POPs was confirmed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in their Draft 1994 Dioxin Reassessment, which has never been formally released to the public. According to the Draft Reassessment, 93 per cent of our exposure to Dioxin comes from the consumption of beef, dairy, milk, chicken, pork, fish, and eggs; in other words, the western diet.

A May 2001 study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health drew similar conclusions to the EPA Reassessment. In addition, the study found that “nursing infants have a far higher intake of dioxins relative to body weight than do all older age groups,” and that human breast milk was twice as toxic as dairy milk. It also found that vegans had the overall lowest rate of POPs in their bodies.

According to an October 2009 paper by the Research Centre for Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology at Masaryk University, another major source of POPs, specifically DDT, is the world’s oceans. The paper also found that despite restrictions placed on the use of DDT more than 30 years ago, concentrations of the toxin are on the rise.

Indigenous people carry an unequally high proportion of this global toxic burden. For instance, according to Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) there are 212 Indigenous communities in Canada living near or downstream from pulp mills and other facilities that produce dioxins and furans. One striking example is the old Dryden pulp mill near Grassy Narrows which, according to the Grassy Narrows and Islington Bands Mercury Disability Board, dumped tonnes of dioxin-laced mercury wastewater into the English-Wabigoon River system from 1962-70.

Forty years later, the poisonous waste continues to pose a “serious health threat” to Grassy Narrows and the Wabaseemoong First Nations, says the Disability Board. No formal steps have been taken toward remediation by federal or provincial governments.

The Tohono O’odham Nation's experience bears a close resemblance to Grassy Narrows: the world’s highest rate of diabetes can be found in southwest Arizona nation. According to Tribal health officials, nearly 70 per cent of the population of 28,000 has been diagnosed with the illness. The O’odham People make up the second largest Indigenous Nation in the United States.

Lori Riddle is a member of Aquimel O’odham Community and founder of the Gila River Alliance for a Clean Environment (GRACE).

GRACE was instrumental in the 10 year struggle against a hazardous waste recycling plant that operated without full permits on O’odham land for decades. Owned by Romic Environmental Technologies Corporation, the plant continuously spewed effluents into the air until it was finally shut down in 2007.

The Romic plant was not the first contributor to the O’odham’s toxic burden, explained Riddle. Looking back to her childhood, she recalled: “For nearly a year, [when] a plane would go over our heads, you could see the mist. We never thought to cover our water. The chemicals just took over and they became a part of us.”

From the early 1950s until the late 60s, cotton farmers in the Gila River watershed routinely sprayed DDT onto their crops to protect them from bollworms. According to the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), each and every year the farmers used roughly twenty-three pounds of DDT per acre.

In 1969, the State of Arizona banned the use of DDT; by this time the river was gravely contaminated. According to the ATSDR, farmers then switched to Toxaphene, a substitute for DDT—until it was banned by the US government in 1990.

Because of these chemicals, Riddle explains, the O’odham were forced to abandon their traditional foods and adopt a western diet. Farms also went into a recession, forcing many families to leave their communities. Companies, such as Romic, began moving on to their territory, exasperating the situation. “It’s taken a toll on our quality of life,” she says. “I’ve cried myself to sleep.”

The O’odham are dealing with what Riddle terms “cluster symptoms,” including miscarriages, arthritis in the spine, breathing problems, unexplainable skin rashes and problems regenerating blood cells. This is in addition to diabetes, which frequently leads to renal failure, blindness, heart disease, and amputations.

More and more studies are showing the link between diabetes and persistent organic pollutants like DDT—stemming from the landmark Ranch Hand study. In 1998, the study found a 166 per cent increase in diabetes (requiring insulin control) in US Air Force personnel who were sprayed with the herbicide and defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The study also found that as dioxin levels increased so did the presence and severity of Type 2 Diabetes, and the time to onset declined following a similar trend.

However, Dr. Carpenter notes that because of the widely-endorsed belief that diabetes is a life-style disease related to diet and exercise, the link is gaining little attention by governments, news agencies, or by any of the hundreds of non-profit diabetes foundations around the world. “[It] hasn’t even made it into the medical community at this point,” Dr. Carpenter adds. “It takes a long time to change both medical and public opinion.”

“Clearly one thing everyone can do is to eat less animal fats,” suggests Dr. Carpenter. Several Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba and British Columbia have begun to do this, planting their own gardens and building greenhouses; returning, in a traditional sense, to some of the foods that sustained them for millennia. Others are turning to exercise, which plays a vital role not just in the prevention of diabetes, but in their overall health.

"Also, we must find ways of getting the POPs out of the animals that we eat. That is not going to be easy, given how contaminated we have made the world,” adds Dr. Carpenter. For this, Lori Riddle, who is herself a diabetic, points to the Tribal Council and the Federal Government.

John Schertow is an Indigenous rights advocate and author of the blog Intercontinental Cry.

POPs

Mad as a Hatter

hillarybain — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:11:58 +0000

Canada's mercury pollution on Indigenous lands

If a thermometer breaks in a classroom, spilling mercury, most children are taught to stay away. “That's all it takes to poison an entire body of water,” teachers will tell them. Many children also read Alice In Wonderland at school, and are familiar with the Mad Hatter. Few, however, know that the zany character in the children’s story is suffering from "mad hatter's syndrome," or mercury poisoning. Even less likely to appear in schoolbooks is the fact that there are hundreds of sites in Canada contaminated with this highly toxic metal, many of them on Indigenous land.

The Anishinabek of Grassy Narrows, White Dog and Quibell

In 1970, the government of Canada informed commercial fishermen and tourist-lodge owners along the English-Wabigoon River system in north western Ontario that the fish were testing for extremely high levels of mercury, and that the rivers were poisoned.

Soon after the announcement, the source of contamination was discovered: Dryden Chemicals Limited had been dumping its untreated mercury wastewater into the river. All told, the company released more than 20,000 pounds of mercury-contaminated wastewater between 1962 and 1970.

Just upstream from Dryden's plant were the communities of Quibell (later known as Wabauskang First Nation), Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows First Nation) and Wabaseemong (White Dog First Nation). After the warning was made public, the Ontario government told the First Nations communities to stop eating the fish--their main food source--and advised Grassy Narrows to shut down its commercial fishery.

The economies were devastated. In Grassy Narrows alone, the employment rate dropped from 90 per cent to 10. In addition, residents had to find different food sources and many were already suffering from mercury poisoning.

Mercury poisoning, or Minamata disease, causes eye problems, loss of co-ordination, numbness in the hands and feet, loss of memory, loss of strength, severe birth defects, "insanity," neurological disorders and death. People in Grassy Narrows, White Dog and Quibell all showed symptoms of poisoning.

"Aware of the possibility of getting compensation for loss of livelihood," notes the Grassy Narrows & Islington Bands Mercury Disability Board website, "the two First Nations immediately began to look into ways of getting financial assistance for its members. It took 16 years to achieve their goal."

In 1985, the Federal and Provincial Governments, along with Great Lakes Forest Products and Dryden Chemicals' parent company, Reed Inc, paid the communities of Grassy Narrows and White Dog a little over $16 million.

The mercury, however, was never removed from the water.

At the time of the settlement, "scientists and government officials assured them [the communities] that the mercury would be completely out of the system in 30 years," says Dr. Leanne Simpson, a researcher from the Alderville First Nation who works with Grassy Narrows and Wabauskang, in a June 9, 2008, press release.

Discussing the Final Report of the Wabauskang First Nations Indigenous Knowledge and Contaminants Program, Simpson further explains that mercury concentrations in 1975 ranged "from 0.47 to 5.98 ppm [parts per million]. Health Canada's guideline for the safe consumption of fish for frequent fish eaters is 0.2 ppm."

Understanding that mercury doesn't just 'disappear' but rather works its way up the food chain and throughout the environment, Grassy Narrows and Wabauskang initiated two joint studies, which were completed in 2002 and 2004. The studies indicated that there were still high concentrations of mercury in the local populations of pike, walleye and otters.

Moreover, residents from both communities continue to suffer from an array of mercury-poisoning symptoms. The Mercury Disability Board--established on December 31, 2007, to implement the terms of the 1985 settlement--has processed 819 initial applications for benefits from adults and another 88 applications for children.

The current situation for the small community of Quibell, known today as the Wabauskang First Nation, is even worse than for Grassy Narrows and White Dog.

In 1919, epidemics of smallpox and tuberculosis were introduced into the Wabauskang reservation and the population was decimated. Potentially facing extinction, the few surviving Wabauskang scattered themselves throughout the region. "Some...chose to relocate to their traplines and hunting grounds to escape the disease; others moved to the old Grassy Narrows Reserve, to Lac Seule, Eagle Lake, and Quibell," Simpson explains.

In the mid-1940s, inhabitants of Quibell started getting sick. “It was the children and babies who bore the brunt of [it]. Between 1947 and 1949, 10 babies died, all in their first year of life, and all had violent seizures, and what doctors and nurses at the time called 'an incurable disease,'" continues Simpson. "Most of the babies that died were bottle-fed with Carnation milk mixed directly with water from the river."

While not official, Dryden was likely responsible for these deaths. To make pulp, the company used a process called 'krafting,' which generated a toxic black liquid that mills at the time would simply pour into the river. "Kraft pulp and paper mills were notorious for using Hg compounds [such as mercury chloride]...to keep pulp and paper from rotting," Simpson adds. "This could have easily been spilled into the river system and converted to methylmercury."

Years later--too late for many residents of Quibell, according to Simpson--the company installed a recovery boiler that allowed them to recycle the black liquid.

Then came the second wave of mercury pollution, from 1962 to 1970. During this time, Dryden operated a mercury cell chlor-alkali plant to make chlorine for bleaching paper, a process that generates tons of mercury waste. The waste being dumped into the river meant that the population of Quibell was devastated further, along with the Grassy Narrows and White Dog communities.

Shortly after Dryden's actions were made public, the government decided to re-establish the Wabauskang Reserve, and the community of Quibell was relocated.

The government excluded the people of Quibell from the Grassy Narrows and White Dog settlement. In fact, the residents didn't even know they were suffering from mercury poisoning until the 1980s.

Former residents of Quibell want to know why they were excluded from the settlement. Not only were they closer to Dryden than the other two communities, but even now there are several Wabauskang showing mercury-poisoning symptoms.

Thousands and thousands more

In Canada today there are dozens of chlor-alkali plants, pulp mills, coal-powered generation plants, various mining projects (such as gold mines) and other industrial facilities that use and release mercury near indigenous communities. Environment Canada's 2005 National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) reports a total of 172 facilities within a 50 km distance of 135 communities across the country.

Communities that report mercury pollution include Akwesasne, Fort William, Aamjiwnaang, Pictou Landing, James Bay, Cheslatta, Tl'azt'en, Tse Keh Nay, Norway House, Eel River Bar, Fort Chipewyan, Fort MacKay, West Moberly and Fort Simpson (Deh Cho).

With the exception of Grassy Narrows, White Dog, Wabauskang, and possibly James Bay, a thorough study has never been conducted to show whether these communities are suffering mercury poisoning. However, the 1999 Health Canada report "Methylmercury in Canada: Exposure of First Nations and Inuit Residents to Methylmercury in the Canadian Environment, Volume 3" may give us an indication. The report revealed 17,671 indigenous people had blood-mercury levels ranging from 20-699 ppb (parts per billion) between 1971 and 1996.

In a message posted on the Friends of Anishinabek of the Gitchi Gami website, John H.W. Hummel, a pollution researcher based in British Columbia, explains that, "when mercury or lead levels of 5 ppb to 6 ppb are found in the brain, 25 per cent of the glial progenitor stem cells simply 'shut down.' These particular brain cells are absolutely crucial for building the brain during infancy and beyond. This type of brain cell is also found in adults."

Hummel believes that the thousands of indigenous people who have been ignored by the government should embark on a class action lawsuit and has contacted Tony Merchant from Merchant Law Group. Based in Saskatchewan, Merchant is the lawyer behind the recent compensation settlement for Residential school victims.

In his reply to Hummel, Merchant said he does not believe anything can be done for Grassy Narrows because of the 1985 settlement, but, "if there are identifiable mercury issues elsewhere," a lawsuit is a possibility. "We are prepared to pursue this issue," Merchant says. "We are prepared to fund the battle which includes a battle regarding experts. If there are projects that we might undertake, we will undertake them."

You can find more articles by John Schertow on his blog, Intercontinental Cry

Mad Hatter