Alas, Pulp Pollution is Still With Us

by Jay Ritchlin and Peter Ronald

October 17, 2000 (Pulp Pollution Day)

What in the world? A day to contemplate pulp mill pollution? Hasn't that problem been taken care of?

In a word, no. Contamination of air, water and soil remain unavoidable facts of life at BC's 23 pulp mills. Until the industry embraces available alternatives and stops creating myriad toxic wastes, the problem will remain. It is a problem that affects us all.

Powell River Spill
Pulp Pollution Day commemorates the largest chlorine dioxide (ClO2) spill in Canadian history, when 600,000 litres was accidentally released from the Powell River pulp mill. The residents of that community and the nearby Sliammon First Nation reserve were very nearly devastated by the highly toxic pulp bleaching gas.

On October 17, 1994, an explosion at the mill ruptured a ClO2 storage tank and released the deadly gas. Had the winds been coming from a slightly different direction, many lives could have been lost.

Alternatives to chlorine-based bleaching DO exist, which reduce the risk of future catastrophic accidents AND reduce toxic pollution in the environment.

Routine Exposure
The BC Cancer Agency has just finished the second stage of a study on pulp mill workers. These results show that long-time pulp mill workers have an increased likelihood of prostrate cancer, stomach cancer and leukemia. Sulfite mill workers also have an increased chance of rectal cancer.

Some contaminants associated with BC’s pulp mills are dioxin, PCB, nonyl-phenol, chloroform, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and heavy metals. Some of these are persistent pollutants, staying in the environment and our bodies for a long time. Thus, even reduced pollution outputs contribute to the mills’ toxic legacy, continuing to make it worse.

Working at and living near pulp mills is hazardous to your health. It is especially dangerous to babies and young children because some of the chemicals act like hormones, screwing up human growth and development.

Even BC's most modern mills continue to create contamination that damages the DNA of fish. Whether it is doing the same to our children is not yet clear.

Pulp mills are making our air toxic too. Particulate matter, small particles from burning, hurt people with asthma or pulmonary disease and have just been declared toxic to humans under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Mills also produce pollution that leads to smog and global warming.

Dioxins and Furans
Perhaps most disturbing, given industry claims that they have solved the dioxin problem, is the fact that pulp mills are the largest single source of airborne dioxins in BC and create one-fifth of all measured dioxin in Canada. Mills have made dioxin hard to measure in the water, but there is plenty in their air emissions and ash. There is plenty of it being created.

Dioxins and furans are known carcinogens and mutagens. They persist in animal tissue and the environment. They are fat-soluble and pass from mothers to children across the placenta and via breast milk. They are often present in dairy products and seafood.

Dioxins and furans are "Priority One" substances for elimination, according to the federal government, yet the pulp industry continues to procrastinate in eliminating them.

Recent announcements of improvements to the Crofton and Elk Falls mills attempted to sugarcoat the effects of so-called "salt-haze". This is actually airborne dioxin from the burning of salted wood, and it settles on waterways, farms, fields and communities.

Sludge
Sludge is the solid waste left over from pulp mill wastewater treatment plants. At this stage, some toxic chemicals are broken down, others are not. Mills are running out of landfill space and want to spread sludge on our forests, parks and farms. We don't know if this industrial waste causes genetic mutations or harms the hormone systems of wildlife, or people exposed to it. And we don't know if gases from the sludge can harm workers who have to handle it, or the people who live near a sludge-spreading site.

There are very good reasons to test for these problems before land spreading is approved.

Time to clean up their act
Pulp mills routinely flout the law, exceeding Ministry of Environment pollution permits. Six mills made the most recent permit-breaking polluters list, including Crofton, Powell River and Skeena Cellulose.

It is time pulp mills cleaned up their act. They need to get rid of chlorine chemicals that create long-lasting pollution, move to "closed-loop" systems that recycle their wastes instead of dumping them on all of us, and stop using chemicals that make workers sick.

If they do, we can change Pulp Pollution Day to a celebration of safe, sustainable communities. Maybe then we could call it “Pulp Solution Day”.

 

Back to main "Pulp Pollution" page