There is scientific data that makes me go to the barricades against our collective denial. Smoke comes out of my ears and sadness wets my eyes.
Especially when it comes to the health of our children being sold off for the benefit of a multinational.
Even more so, when it is done with the complicity of governments who nevertheless have a duty to protect their populations.
Toxic snow
This is the case when seeing the results of snow analyzes in Rouyn-Noranda. Analyzes carried out by the firm Véritas on behalf of a non-profit citizen organization: Mères au front.
Samples were collected between November 2022 and March 2023 from different areas of the city and beyond.
The results demonstrate that the poisons emitted by the Horne Foundry are measurable at high rates well beyond the buffer zone of the Notre-Dame district where the population will be expropriated.
They reveal that several kilometers from the Glencore-owned smelter, arsenic, lead, nickel and cadmium accumulate in the snow all winter. This forms a more concentrated cocktail at the time of spring melt than can be measured in the air periodically.
This is the case on the other side of Lake Osisko, in neighborhoods where children grow up who play in the snow and eat it while having fun.
They do it like all children in Quebec, without knowing that they are absorbing poisons since they are tasteless, odorless and colorless and no discomfort is felt at the moment.
However, their health risks being affected years later. It is not insignificant that life expectancy is five years less in this city than elsewhere in Quebec and that many rare diseases are not so rare when you talk to doctors.
Dangerous
You should know that arsenic and lead are considered non-threshold contaminants. In other words, they can be harmful to health, even at very low concentrations, particularly for children and pregnant women.
The standards established by governments are already political compromises, because we know that it is impossible to completely escape them. Every population should aspire to zero exposure.
Knowingly authorizing significant excesses of standards, as successive governments have done in Rouyn-Noranda, is grossly irresponsible when we are aware of the risks thus imposed on children.
Evidence
Exposure, even to low doses of arsenic and lead, can impair many body functions throughout life.
Many studies have demonstrated declines in intelligence quotient, behavioral changes, reduced concentration and increased antisocial behavior in the case of lead.
Exposure to arsenic is associated with growth retardation, malformations in babies and, later in life, respiratory disorders and cancers. Notably!
How many more studies will be necessary to finally protect the population?
As Gabrielle Izaguirre-Falardeau and Jean-Lou David write in Arsenic my love: “There will be no question of keeping our mouths shut.”