David Boyd with (L-R) nephew Seamus, daughter Meredith and niece Sonje
Contrary to Canada’s reputation as a relatively clean and pristine land, environmental hazards can be found almost everywhere—in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the products we buy. That’s according to David Boyd, a research associate with UVic’s POLIS Project on Ecological Governance.
Boyd’s recent study—the first of its kind on environmental disease in Canada—indicates that all Canadians are exposed to harmful chemicals. Pollution is killing up to 25,000 Canadians each year and costing the nation’s health care system up to $9.1 billion and 1.5 billion hospital days annually. The study also estimates that environmental pollutants in Canada cause as many as 24,000 new cases of cancer and 2,500 low birth-weight babies every year.
“If politicians took the time to understand both the magnitude of adverse health effects caused by environmental hazards and the overall costs to Canadian society, they would have no choice but to act,” says Boyd, an environmental lawyer who worked with the David Suzuki Foundation this fall to call for a national environmental health strategy. (See below.)
Boyd co-authored the paper, “The Environmental Burden of Disease in Canada: Respiratory Disease, Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer and Congenital Affliction,” with Dr. Stephen Genuis from the University of Alberta. Their research is the first to measure the magnitude of adverse health effects caused by Canadians’ exposure to environmental hazards such as air pollution (outdoor and indoor), pesticides, dioxins, heavy metals, flame retardants and other persistent organic pollutants.
“There are 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,” says Boyd, “and our environmental record ranks 28th. When faced with a choice between protecting the environment or polluting industries, we continue to protect industries.”
Because there is strong evidence linking certain diseases to environmental contaminants, Boyd and Genius estimated Canada’s environmental burden of disease (EBD)—the morbidity and mortality caused by exposure to environmental hazards—by addressing four categories: respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer and congenital afflictions.
“Most chronic diseases are multi-factorial resulting from lifestyle, socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and genetic determinants interacting over the course of a person’s lifetime,” Boyd explains. “So it’s a challenge to accurately determine how much disease is attributable to adverse environmental exposures. Still, quantifying the EBD is an important endeavour because it highlights the magnitude of environmental harm and may identify specific risk factors that affect public health.”
This information can be used to direct research, inform public education efforts, assist physicians in providing advice to patients, guide health and environmental policy-making and evaluate the effectiveness of policies, programs, and other interventions.
The authors used the environmentally attributable fractions (EAFs) developed by the World Health Organization, EAFs developed by other researchers, and data from Canadian public health institutions to provide an initial estimate of the environmental burden of disease in Canada for four major categories of disease.
The study is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2007.08.009.
National environmental health strategy
Canada needs a cohesive environmental strategy that includes more monitoring of people’s exposures to environmental contaminants, a strengthening of environmental laws, and increased awareness about these issues, says a new report by David R. Boyd, a research associate with UVic’s POLIS Project on Ecological Governance.
In September, the David Suzuki Foundation released Boyd’s 152-page report, “Prescription for a Healthy Canada.” Boyd prepared the report based on a review of more than 100 recent scientific studies. It says Canada lacks a national system to track diseases and deaths from environmental causes. The report identifies five areas that it considers failings on the part of the federal government:
- A lack of legally binding national standards for air quality and drinking water quality
- The continued use of pesticides that have been banned in other countries
- The allowance of higher limits of pesticide residues on foods compared to other countries
- A lack of regulation of toxins such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, phthalates and polycyclic hydrocarbons
- Weak regulations for toxic substances such as radon, lead, mercury, arsenic and asbestos.
The full report.
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