Indigenous leaders and experts are questioning Transport Canada’s claim that contamination at a dock in Fort Chipewyan is unlikely to pose any risks to human health.
Last week, Indigenous leaders called out the federal government for not telling them about the contamination, pointing out Transport Canada had many opportunities over the past year, but failed to do so.
A 2017 environmental site assessment commissioned by Transport Canada found its dock — known locally as the “Big Dock” and the surrounding soil and waters in Fort Chipewyan had toxic hydrocarbons, metals and compounds.
“This dock is in the middle of our community, our kids swim there,” Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam said at a virtual press conference last week. ACFN, Mikisew Cree First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Metis Nation shared the 2017 report with reporters.
It noted that “subsistence living is not present in the vicinity of the impacted areas” and said local people don’t rely on natural resources for survival when assessing potential human exposure. Adam disagreed with that assessment.
“Big Dock is the go-to spot for anyone to fish that doesn’t have a boat. This includes kids,” Adam told Canada’s National Observer.
“And it’s not catch-and-release, they take them home and fry them up, depending on the size.”
The area around the dock is also the closest place to the community where locals go to harvest sage, raspberry and juniper, Adam pointed out.
At the press conference last week he criticized the 2017 report because it “only considered commercial use for the site and did not reflect the reality of people swimming, fishing, hunting, trapping and harvesting there.” The ACFN and Mikisew Cree First Nation urged members not to do any of these activities at or near the dock.
Indigenous leaders obtained this 430-page report through a third party contractor they hired to dredge the dock. That report had recommended Transport Canada do a health and ecological risk assessment.
Transport Canada spokesperson Sau Sau Lui told Canada’s National Observer in an emailed statement that this follow up risk assessment “concluded that the site was not likely to pose any risks to human health” and “considered a variety of uses such as, swimming and fishing.”
Lui did not share a copy of the follow-up assessment or explain why the department would not make it public.
The 2017 report made public by Indigenous leaders last week showed arsenic concentrations exceeded provincial guidelines nine out of 10 sediment sampling locations and nickel exceedances were found at all 10. Both arsenic and nickel are cancer-causing and can have other negative health impacts.
Groundwater samples showed metal concentrations above guidelines used to protect aquatic life and indicate the metal impacts are widespread in the groundwater across the site.
Thirty-one out of 35 sediment sampling locations reported at least one polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compound that exceeded guidelines.
“They specifically mention benzene, for example, and there's no safe level of benzene,” said Tim Takaro, a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University and physician-scientist trained in occupational and environmental medicine, public health and toxicology.
“It's a carcinogen … any exposure is additional risk,” he said, explaining benzene is readily absorbed through the skin.
The 2017 report ranked different exposure pathways from 0 to 22 based on how likely people are to be impacted through it — zero being no suspected impacts.
The number the study landed on a total score of 13, “which is right on the borderline of, ‘we need to do something,’” Takaro told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.
“That's not the way toxicology works — that, ‘well, if you're at 13, you're fine and you're not fine at 14’ … It's not on-off like that,” Takaro said.
The 2017 report says the contamination at the Transport Canada wharf is likely a result of long-term use and operation of boats, loading and unloading petroleum, creosote-treated infrastructure and documented spills located at the former bulk fuel tank farm.
Takaro pointed out “often it … the risk assessor really doesn't have any idea of the context and the behaviors of the population living there.”
This happened to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency when it was trying to assess the amount of chemical pollution in certain species of fish on the Columbia River and the potential health risks of eating them. It found tribal members along the Columbia River ate six to eleven times more fish than EPA's estimated national average.
“So if they're saying, ‘We do gather food here,’ they are, and that's something that the colonial risk assessor often misses,” Takaro said.
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
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