Toxic Nation- A Report on Parliament Hill

Overview
For the latest round of Toxic Nation body burden testing, four federal politicians volunteered to be tested for over 100 different chemicals. The participating politicians included Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment; Tony Clement, Minister of Health; Jack Layton, Leader of the NDP; and, John Godfrey, Liberal Environment Critic.Each politician was tested for 103 chemicals that fall under the following groups:

• PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers),
• PFCs (perfluorinated chemicals),
• PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls),
• PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons),
• OPIMs (organophosphate insecticide metabolites),
• OCPs (organochlorine pesticides), and
• metals such as lead and mercury.Studies from around the world have documented the presence of these and other chemicals in people everywhere, no matter where they live, work or play. Environmental Defence’s previous body burden studies have revealed that these chemicals are present in Canadians young and old from across the country.

 Summary of Results and Key Findings
Of the 103 chemicals tested for a total of 61 were detected (59 per cent) in the four volunteers, including 18 PBDEs, five PFCs, 13 PCBs, three OPIMs, 10 OCPs, seven PAHs and five metals. The number of chemicals detected in each volunteer ranged from 49 to 55. Many of the chemicals detected in the politicians are associated with adverse health effects. In total, 54 carcinogens, 37 hormone disruptors, 16 respiratory toxins, 54 reproductive/ developmental toxins, and 33 neurotoxins were detected in the study volunteers. Three chemicals for which there is no data on health effects were detected in the volunteers; all three of these chemicals are PFCs.All four politicians tested were significantly more polluted than both the child and adult volunteers who participated in Environmental Defence’s earlier study, Polluted Children, Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadian Families. Except for the PBDEs, exactly the same set of chemicals were included in both studies, and the analyses were conducted by the same labs using the same methodology. A comparison of the politicians results to those of the volunteers in the first Toxic Nation study (Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadians) was not conducted, due to differences in the chemicals that were tested.The politicians had significantly higher total concentrations than the volunteers in the Polluted Children, Toxic Nation study in every comparable chemical group. For instance, the median total concentration for PFCs in Polluted Children, Toxic Nation was 17.345 ng/mL in serum, while the politicians total PFC concentrations ranged from 23.9 to 50.3 ng/mL. For OPIMs, the politicians total concentrations ranged from 4.8 to 216 ug/L in urine, compared to a median total OPIM concentration in Polluted Children, Toxic Nation of 7.9 ug/L. In addition, every politician had an above normal level of mercury, although none of the mercury levels detected exceeded the alert threshold.Of the four politicians, Tony Clement had the highest total concentrations for PCBs, PFCs and OCPs; Jack Layton had the highest total concentrations for PBDEs and PAHs, as well as mercury, lead and manganese; John Godfrey had the highest total concentration for OPIMs and cadmium; and Rona Ambrose had the highest concentration of arsenic.

 Conclusion and Recommendations
In December 2006, the federal government announced a new Chemical Management Plan that
promises to take action on a list of harmful substances that includes several of the chemicals included in this report.The most harmful chemicals, as identified in the “categorization” exercise recently completed by Health

Canada and Environment Canada, should be phased out of use, except in rare instances (i.e. essential products for which less harmful substitutes are not available).

Canada’s overarching pollution law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), is currently being reviewed by Parliament. The federal government should amend CEPA in the following ways:
• Mandatory and tight timelines should be in place at each stage of the chemicals
management process, from assessment to regulation.
• A special section of CEPA should deal with vulnerable ecosystems such as the

Great Lakes- St. Lawrence basin, where 45 percent of Canada’s toxic air pollution is generated.
• CEPA should place the onus on industry to demonstrate that products in the marketplace are safe, as

Europe is currently implementing with their new toxics law.
• CEPA should explicitly provide protections against harmful substances in consumer
products, which are the source of an increasing number and volume of toxic chemicals.
• The system of industry reporting of toxic emissions, known as the National Pollutant Release Inventory, should be made mandatory and more comprehensive.For background information on toxic chemicals and body burden testing, please refer to previous Toxic Nation Reports:
• Environmental Defence. (2006, June). Polluted Children Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadian Families.
• Environmental Defence. (2005, November). Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadians.

All Toxic Nation Reports are available online at www.toxicnation.ca