(Montreal) The Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, will go to Rouyn-Noranda on Wednesday and some citizens are waiting for him. Others, like Maude Letendre, will follow the arsenic discussions from a distance, as she decided to leave this “wonderful city” when she began to fear for the health of her family.
Posted at 6:55 p.m.
“It’s not easy to leave, it takes money, it takes time and it takes energy,” Maude Letendre told The Canadian Press.
It is with a very heavy heart that she left, in 2020, the city where she lived for 12 years to settle in Gaspésie. Before leaving Rouyn-Noranda, she cut her children’s hair and “kept ziploc bags with dates when I cut their hair.”
If one day his children have health problems, “we will be able to test the hair to determine if there was arsenic or not”.
Hair or fingernail analysis is indeed one of the methods used to establish exposure to high levels of arsenic.
“I ripped my children out of their world to do damage control” and “I ripped out my heart to save my body, because you see, my body was not well,” says Ms.me Letendre who claims to have stopped having migraines and dizziness since living in Gaspésie.
“Is there a connection? I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, ”wonders the mother on the line.
The presence of arsenic in the air worried Maude Letendre a lot, but “the political inaction that I saw was also a powerful motivator to leave”, because, she says, the authorities had known for a long time that the Rouyn-Noranda air was dangerous for the citizens.
Indeed, the government had been aware for several years that a dangerous situation had to be corrected. In 2004, in a report entitled “Notice on arsenic in ambient air in Rouyn-Noranda”, the Ministry of the Environment pointed out that “the population was exposed to emissions which sometimes reached 1000 nanograms/meter 3 , therefore 330 times higher than the current provincial standard”.
The authors of the report called on the owners of the Horne Foundry at the time to “undertake to quickly present to the MENV (within two months) an intervention plan identifying the timetable and the interventions that will have to be carried out to achieve a target of 3 ng/m3 in the Notre-Dame district.
Almost 20 years have passed since that report and the Glencore-owned smelter is currently releasing airborne up to 100 nanograms of arsenic per cubic meter (100 ng/m3), 33 times higher than the provincial standard.
“Confidence is shaken, because the responsibility to protect the population belongs to the government, to public health. We expect these people to protect our lives,” summarizes Ms.me Letendre who fears that “arsenic is only the tip of the iceberg”.
She points out that “not all contaminants have been studied” and that “arsenic passes through the system, it leaves damage, but there are other heavy metals that accumulate”.
Last week, the national director of public health of Quebec, Luc Boileau, indicated that other studies must be carried out in the coming weeks concerning the emissions of arsenic, but also of other metals in the air of Rouyn. -Noranda.
The population keeps the pressure on elected officials
Meanwhile in the city of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, citizens are increasing awareness-raising actions and maintaining pressure on elected officials.
A few days ago, women from the collective Mothers at the front dressed in white protective suits against hazardous materials demonstrated singing on the main street before posting the video of their action on social networks.
“Spread your arsenic, in a toxic cloud, as the smelter would say, a glass of arsenic filled, I’ll put three… no 100 nanograms!” “, sang in chorus some Mothers at the front who had changed the lyrics of the song “the pudding with arsenic” of the film Asterix and Cleopatra.
It is this group of committed women who made an appointment with the citizens of Rouyn-Noranda on Monday evening at the municipal council meeting. About a hundred people turned out to ask Mayor Diane Dallaire and her councilors to take a clear and firm position regarding arsenic emissions from the Horne Foundry.
Tempers got a little heated, according to Nicole Desgagnés, spokesperson for the Stop Toxic Discharges and Emissions Committee (ARET).
“There was a lot of anger, a lot of indignation and sadness,” said Ms.me Desgagnés because of the “soft” position taken until now by elected officials.
A few hours after this meeting with citizens, Tuesday morning, Mayor Dallaire said on RDI that she is asking the government “to aim for compliance with standards, for all metals, not just arsenic. , be it lead, cadmium or nickel”.
This declaration “helps to build the confidence of citizens”, but it is insufficient, according to Nicole Desgagnés.
The spokesperson for the ARET committee implores the municipal council to write black and white, in a resolution, that it asks the government of Quebec to impose on Glencore compliance with Quebec standards.
As for the planned visit of the Minister of the Environment on Wednesday, Mrme Desgagnés maintains that citizens are waiting for him.
She recalls that Rouynorandians already knew the impact of arsenic emissions on health in the fall of 2019, after learning of a public health biomonitoring report and that an alarm bell had also been sounded. in a report by the Ministry of the Environment in 2004.
“We wasted so much time. Now people want precise short-term targets, we know it will be expensive”, but citizens “are no longer capable”, indicates Nicole Desgagnés, emphasizing “that we no longer need new studies”.
Minister Benoit Charette had planned to go to the city of Abitibi-Témiscamingue on Tuesday to discuss the arsenic emissions produced by the Horne Foundry “with local actors”, but “a maintenance problem on the plane” forced him to postpone the visit to Wednesday.
Over a period of 70 years, between one and 14 citizens of Rouyn-Noranda would develop cancer if Glencore did not reduce the concentration of arsenic in the air produced by the Horne smelter.
This is one of the conclusions of a study by the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ), published last week.