About fifty doctors from Rouyn-Noranda are urging Quebec to force the Horne Foundry to reduce its polluting emissions “without delay” to reduce the exposure to contaminants of the inhabitants of the city.
Posted at 6:56 p.m.
They demand that the concentrations of atmospheric contaminants such as arsenic and other heavy metals be lowered to standards “deemed safe for health by experts from the Ministry of the Environment”.
The Quebec standard limits arsenic concentrations to 3 nanograms per cubic meter of air (ng/m3), but Quebec authorizes the Horne Foundry to generate concentrations of 100 ng/m3.
Recent data published by the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Regional Public Health Department (DSPu) about Rouyn-Noranda, where life expectancy is lower than elsewhere in Quebec and where lung cancer rates, intrauterine growth retardation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are more common, were the “alarm bells” that caused doctors to speak out en bloc, says DD Marie-Pier Lemieux.
We become a kind of living laboratory on what it feels like to expose populations to high concentrations of pollutants.
The DD Marie-Pier Lemieux, doctor in Rouyn-Noranda
The situation is all the more deplorable as the emissions of contaminants are a “modifiable” factor, recalls the DD Lemieux, believing that it is up to the government to be more demanding of the foundry.
“There is no reason that Rouyn, the standard is different than elsewhere in Quebec,” she says.
The doctors also question François Legault on “the major economic impact of an increase in cancers and chronic diseases within the population” of the city, as well as the “overload to be expected on [le] health system, already at full capacity, from this increase in patients”.
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- 43,092
- Number of inhabitants in Rouyn-Noranda
Source: Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing