The pollution of the air breathed by the population of the lower town of Quebec causes, each year, as many fatal heart attacks as smoking and kills 269 people prematurely in the capital, according to the report My environment, my health presented Monday by the public health department of the Capitale-Nationale.
Made public after five years of work, the study raises a red flag around fine particles, responsible for approximately 20 new asthma diagnoses per year in children, and recommends reducing the place given to the automobile, already important in the capital and likely to increase with the opening of a road tunnel between Quebec and Lévis.
The Public Health report points to the same culprits as those blamed, at the end of January, by the voluminous study produced by an independent committee set up by the government. Wood heating and automobile transport are, for the second time in as many reports, on the dock.
Heart and respiratory problems
The 25,000 wood stoves counted on the territory of the city of Quebec contribute to a third of the emissions of fine particles and represent the main source of this pollutant in Quebec, according to Public Health. The Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Roch districts, along with Vieux-Limoilou, represent the places where the greatest quantity of fine particles in the air is concentrated.
However, the issue does not only concern the lower town: fine particles “have impacts everywhere in Quebec City” and they contribute, the report specifies, to a significant proportion of the cardiovascular and respiratory health problems of residents throughout the city. the capital. “About 33 people would die of a heart attack attributable to this exposure” each year, calculates Public Health, or 15% of premature deaths associated with this condition. In addition, fine particles are the cause of 24% of new cases of asthma in children in the lower town, twice as many as those caused by second-hand tobacco smoke.
Health Canada estimates that in Quebec, 269 people die prematurely, each year, for having long breathed in fine particles. The latter also cause 208 chronic bronchitis and send 157 people to the hospital, according to the federal agency. In cold hard cash, these health issues cost society more than $2 billion annually.
“Avoid any project that increases road traffic”
The study represents a new obstacle on the already rocky road of the third link. If the environment is a pebble in the shoe of the tunnel promised by the CAQ, public health could now become a thorn in its side. Main source of nitrogen dioxide emissions, road traffic causes about twenty premature deaths each year in Quebec, according to Health Canada. In the capital, adds regional public health, a quarter of the population lives less than 100 meters from a busy road.
The priority recommendation contained in the report asks to press the accelerator of sustainable mobility and to curb dependence on the automobile, particularly in the lower town of the capital. The mouth of the third link, which would bring, according to estimates, some 40,000 additional cars in an area already surrounded by motorways, is likely to worsen the situation, in the light of the report presented Monday.
In particular, it is necessary to “avoid any project increasing road traffic”, indicates the report. We must also reduce the general space granted to cars in the development of our cities, in particular by reducing the width of traffic lanes to sow greenery on the area spared.
Inventory of wood stoves
Nickel, the source of a major outcry in Quebec due to the reduction in the standard of concentration in the air decreed by the government, finds favor in the eyes of Public Health. “The cancer risk from nickel is uncertain,” the report states. Even estimated conservatively, it would represent less than one case of cancer over 70 years in the population of Limoilou, Vanier and the lower town. »
Although the risk turns out to be “very low”, adds Public Health, it is “not zero, which justifies continuing efforts to reduce it”. The concentration of nickel also turns out to be too low, for public health, to cause chronic respiratory problems.
The City of Quebec was quick to react. Its mayor, Bruno Marchand, announced his desire to create, as of this fall, an inventory of wood stoves and other fireplaces on his territory. “Some fireplaces can emit, in four hours, as many fine particles as wood stoves for a week,” said the elected official. In particular, the capital obliges those who have wood heating to have a certified fireplace that complies with its standards by 2026.
“The idea is not to demonize people” who have wood stoves and fireplaces, concludes Bruno Marchand. “The objective is to improve air quality; we are not at all to say “there will be such and such a consequence”. The inventory, for now, is more of a more direct communication tool with woodstove owners, to prevent them, for example, from crackling the logs during smog weather.