The tone is rising between Environment Minister Benoit Charette and the regional public health departments (DRSP) as the latter unite to denounce the project to raise the standard on the presence of nickel in the air.
“It is preferable, from a public health perspective, not to modify upwards the daily standard of 14 ng / m3 for this metal and its carcinogenic compounds”, write the DRSPs in a joint brief sent to the Ministry of the Environment. . “Maximizing efforts to reduce air pollution at source as much as possible appears to be a much more promising and sustainable scenario than the one currently proposed. »
The document was initialed by the directors of the 18 regional public health departments in Quebec. The latter plead that the portrait on the characterization of nickel in the air in Quebec is “incomplete”. They further write that “the desire to make this standard more flexible is based above all on economic arguments and that the fact of emitting more nickel into the air does not represent an advantage from the point of view of protecting the environment. health and the environment. »
Invited to react Thursday morning, the Minister of the Environment Benoit Charette hinted that he had no choice but to raise the standard. “We cannot think of electrifying our transport without nickel,” he said before adding that the current standard “would slow down the development of the battery sector. »
Regarding the exit of the regional public health departments, he minimized the scope of it by stressing that they had not provided “new data and studies” and that the “national” public health, it supported the change of standard.
More details will follow.
To see in video