The College of Physicians of Quebec asks the Government of Quebec to act to protect the health of the citizens of Rouyn-Noranda against the high concentrations of arsenic in the air emitted from the Horne smelter.
Monday morning, the Twitter account of the professional order of physicians of Quebec published a reaction to an open letter published Sunday by a group of doctors and health professionals from the Rouyn-Noranda region.
“The science is clear. Measures must be put in place quickly to ensure better air quality. The health of the citizens of Rouyn-Noranda is paramount, ”wrote the College of Physicians of Quebec.
The medical college told The Canadian Press that it “will not be commenting further beyond the tweet” it posted on Monday morning. “We will certainly follow this file closely this week,” added the communications department of the College of Physicians in an email.
The Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment (AQME) gave its support to the request of the College of Physicians, Monday, through the voice of its president:
“On behalf of AQME, I can only express our support for this approach and these demands. All citizens have the right to live in a healthy environment. Environmental inequalities that harm health are not acceptable,” said Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers on Twitter.
Carcinogenic
On Sunday, family physician Marie-Pier Lemieux published a letter signed by some fifty colleagues asking that Premier François Legault “demand without delay a return to the same standards as all of Quebec for exposure to atmospheric contaminants. from citizens who live near the Horne smelter.
Arsenic emissions from this smelter, which began operations in 1927, reach 100 ng/m3 (nanograms per cubic meter), well beyond the acceptable threshold of 3 ng / m3 set by Quebec.
The collective of health professionals recalls, in its open letter, that “arsenic is a non-threshold carcinogen (the probability of an effect increases from zero exposure dose). The standard set by the Quebec Ministry of the Environment is 3 ng/m3, a standard at which the risk to health is considered to be negligible. From 15ng/m3, neurocognitive effects have been described in some studies in children. »
A controversial appendix
Radio-Canada recently revealed that in July 2019, the then national director of public health, Dr. Horacio Arruda, had an appendix that mentioned a much higher incidence of lung cancer removed from a report. in Rouyn-Noranda than elsewhere in Quebec and citing arsenic as an aggravating factor. According to the minutes of a meeting held in the wake of the presentation of the report, Dr. Arruda had withdrawn the appendix after meeting with the management of the foundry. He recently claimed to have nothing to reproach himself for this decision.
The Legault government assured that it was not he who intervened to remove data on arsenic in the air in Rouyn-Noranda, but the director of public health at the time.
The current national director of public health, Dr. Luc Boileau, is due to travel to Rouyn-Noranda this week as a report from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) on the subject is expected in the coming days. .