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Rebutting oil sands cancer scare
Gary Park For Petroleum News
The balance shows signs of tipping in a debate that has raged for a decade over claims that oil sands development is causing higher cancer rates in the northern Alberta aboriginal community of Fort Chipewyan.
Findings released by Alberta Health Services have concluded that overall rates among Fort Chipewyan residents are what would be expected in the region, except for slight variations in three types of cancer, two of which are deemed to be preventable through vaccination and reduced tobacco smoking, while the third was linked to such risk factors as obesity, diabetes, alcohol and family history.
“There isn’t strong evidence for an association between any of these cancers and environmental exposure,” James Talbot, Alberta’s chief medical officer, told a news conference.
The report shows 81 cases of cancer were diagnosed among the 1,200 residents of Fort Chipewyan from 1992 to 2011, just two more than would have been expected in comparable communities over that period.
Rebuttal of claims The findings are one of the strongest rebuttals of claims by the environment movement that the oil sands are a health hazard and should be grounds for turning down TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the oil sands and North Dakota Bakken to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.
The claims have been the underpinning of a mounting international campaign against further expansion of the oil sands that have seen Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chair of the U.S. Senate environment committee, rail against the resource.
”I have shown you, or at least I have told you, how health miseries follow the tar sands,” she told a news conference in Washington on Feb. 26.
“Health miseries follow tar sands from extraction, to transport, to refining, to waste disposal,” she said.
Boxer’s allegations mirrored those that have been circulating since family physician John O’Connor started calling attention to what he said were an unusually high incidence of rare cancers in Fort Chipewyan.
But Health Canada filed four complaints against O’Connor for causing “undue alarm.”
An investigation by the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded that O’Connor’s statements about the health of Fort Chipewyan residents contained “mistruths, inaccuracies and unconfirmed information.”
That didn’t deter O’Connor and Greenpeace from appearing at the news conference with Boxer to hammer home their anti-Keystone XL message based on what they identified as a public health crisis in Fort Chipewyan.
Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said the Alberta Health Services report falls far short of the “comprehensive, independent study” requested by his community that does not involves governments or industry.
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