Take a Deep Breath
The Alberta Oil Sands Community Exposure and Health Effects Assessment
by Scott Rollans

If Pat McGuinness' friends need to get in touch, they almost always know where to find her: at home. A victim of COPD, chronic obstructed pulmonary disease, she's on oxygen 24 hours a day. Because health insurance pays for just 10 hours of portable oxygen a month, she only leaves the house when she absolutely must.

McGuinness freely admits to being a former smoker, but believes the root of her breathing trouble lies elsewhere. Since moving to Fort McMurray in 1976, she has spent nearly two decades in the shadow of one of the world's largest industrial developments. In 1989, when she first developed asthma, she had a hunch that the oil sands plants were at least partly to blame.

That's a serious assertion in a city which relies on the oil sands for its very existence. In 1964, at the launch of the Great Canadian Oil Sands project, Fort McMurray was home to just 1200 people. Since then, the population has increased more than thirtyfold. The livelihood of virtually everyone in the city comes either directly or indirectly from the oil sands.

McGuinness fully recognized the implications of her complaints. "I didn't want to cry wolf," she says. She kept a diary of her ailments, and checked it monthly against air quality readings from Alberta Environmental Protection. When she found that her problems correlated with high readings of SO2, H2S and hydrocarbons 75% of the time, she decided to speak up.

McGuinness describes herself as a "sensitive receptor", a person who reacts more strongly than most to toxins in the air, but says that others in the community also suffer. Since going public with her concerns, she's heard from "a lot of people" who quietly agree. By acting as their voice, she runs the risk of becoming known as an agitator, a role she accepts philosophically: "My mother always told me my big mouth would get me into trouble."

She points out that no serious scientific study has ever examined the impact of the oil sands projects on human health. "Before building the plants they studied the effects on fish, plants, hydrology and socioeconomics, but never did a baseline community health study."

That may finally be about to change. In 1993, when Syncrude applied to increase production capacity at its Mildred Lake oil sands site, the Energy Resources Conservation Board ordered an Environmental Impact Assessment. At hearings in Fort McMurray, environmentalists (including McGuinness) and native groups raised questions over health effects already being perceived in the community. In its report approving Syncrude's application, the ERCB strongly recommended that the company look into the community's concerns. The result: a proposed new study, the Alberta Oil Sands Community Exposure and Health Effects Assessment.

If the program goes ahead this fall as planned, 300 people will wear personal air monitors around the clock. The monitors will measure individuals' exposure to toxins during day-to-day life - at work and at home, indoors and out. The sample will demonstrate ways in which actual exposure varies from person to person, and show how individual levels relate to the ambient air readings already gathered by the industry and Alberta Environmental Protection. From the findings, scientists will extrapolate a profile of the community as a whole.

The assessment will also provide valuable information to the industry in the long term, says Dr. Warren Kindzierski of Alberta Health. Even though it's more than 30 years too late to gather true baseline community health data, it would now be possible to accurately measure the impact of any future development.

The study will be coordinated by Alberta Health and managed by a committee of community residents, but much of the funding will come from the private sector. Because the results may have implications for the oil sands industry as a whole, Suncor was convinced to join Syncrude in committing money to the project.

Some might find it strange that industry would help pay for an investigation into its own environmental impact. Dr. Ken Nickerson, Syncrude's representative on the project, doesn't see it that way. "We're just as interested as anybody else in the results of the study," he says. "After all, it affects our employees and our families as well. We're all part of the community."

Nickerson says that Syncrude has no problem facing the results, provided the study is conducted in a scientific manner,. "If there are problems," he says, "it's the responsibility of industry to see that they're dealt with."

McGuinness feels confident that, if neccessary, Syncrude and Suncor will take steps to improve their performance. "I don't think they're doing anything wrong on purpose," she says. "I don't want to shut down the oil sands companies. I'd just like the industry to produce oil without injuring people."

If the assessment goes ahead as planned, McGuinness should be able to breathe a bit more easily.

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