Your neighbourhood gas station could be making you sick

Kelly Singh spends a lot of time thinking about everything that goes into housing: what makes a home safer or healthier — or riskier. She is the acting executive director of More Homes Mississauga, a community advocacy group. But until this year, she had no idea gas stations present a health risk for her and the people for whom she advocates. Then, she discovered an obscure Health Canada publication that spelled out the risk from this unremarkable feature of many neighborhoods.

“I started to think about the gas station that's just around the corner from my home,” Singh said, adding the newfound health risk only added to the problems she sees stemming from car-centric infrastructure. “I'm very disturbed by this.”

“They build for cars first, they build for people second,” Singh said. “It becomes…an ugly cycle where you've created an environment where people can only rely on cars, and then you find out that relying on cars is actually bad for your health, but we can't do anything about that because we've invested.”

While many became aware of the dangers of living near toxic benzene emissions this summer during the evacuations of Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia's Chemical Valley, most Canadians still don’t know about the risks associated with benzene exposure from the gas stations on their own streets. 

Any level of benzene exposure can cause adverse health effects. In short-term bursts, breathing benzene can cause dizziness, irregular heartbeat, headache and tremors. But, in the long term, benzene causes leukemia and other blood cancers, especially in children, babies and pregnant people. Childhood leukemia is an acute risk. 

Since 2019, international public health studies have found gas station workers are at increased risk of cancer. One study showed a high risk of health issues in 51 per cent of workers; over 71 per cent of workers had a lifetime cancer risk compared to an average of 42 per cent in the overall population. Significantly higher risk was found in fuelling workers compared to cashiers, and in city workers compared to rural. As well, international public health studies have since shown “the increased health risk suggests that there should be health surveillance for workers in order to protect them from exposure to benzene.” 

In 2023, Health Canada examined the problem of gas stations and concluded gas station benzene emissions can be harmful to people living up to 300 metres away — an “unacceptable risk” to nearby residents, the agency determined. They also found homes as little as 10 metres from the fenceline of gasoline stations, putting them at extremely high risk. 

Health Canada identified some straightforward fixes like implementing minimum distances from gas stations for new construction, alongside other options like vapour recovery and the use of pressure/vacuum valves on vent stacks at the source. But nearly two years later, the federal agency has not passed any guidelines or regulations to prevent injuries.

In February 2024, Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada announced plans to assess and consult on a risk management strategy to limit gasoline stations’ benzene emissions. It’s unclear exactly what the strategy could include and when it will be made public, although the assessment is expected in 2025-2026 to look at the regulations for benzene set under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act way back in 1999, before the chemical’s health effects were as well-studied.

Now, though, there is no federally-accepted limit to benzene exposure in Canada. For example, ​​the benzene occupational exposure limit is 0.5 ppm in Alberta, Ontario and several other provinces but 1 ppm in Quebec and 10 ppm in Yukon, according to data collected by CAREX, a team of researchers and specialists providing information on Canadians’ exposures to carcinogens. There is still no exposure limit for the air residents breathe, even for those living next to gas stations.

There are also currently no rules in Canada about how close a gas station can be to residential areas, leaving it up to individuals to understand and respond to the risk.

“If you could smell benzene, then you're already being exposed to too high of a level for it to be safe,” said Tom Guillen, a lawyer in the U.S. whose practice specializes exclusively in benzene-related cases, representing people who say they have been exposed to the chemical through various methods. 

Guillen described the smell of benzene as a sweet, gasoline-like odor.

“Your risk for these cancers goes up and they're terrible cancers like bone and blood cancers. Treatments are terrible. Your life expectancy is really bad,” Guillen said. “Certainly, preventing these injuries is the way to go.”

When the federal government sets guidelines, provinces are responsible for the actual regulations, and individual municipalities are responsible for the implementation and monitoring.

While Calgary, Edmonton and Mississauga have the highest concentrations of gas stations in the country by some estimates, there is currently no surveillance being done to see what is being emitted from individual gas stations. 

“The Government of Canada does not monitor concentrations of gasoline, diesel, benzene or other related substances in ambient (outdoor) air emitted from individual gasoline stations,” Health Canada said in response to questions, and the agency said it has not estimated the number of individuals being impacted by benzene releases from gasoline stations or other sources.

Residents are now taking note, with some, like Singh, worrying some municipalities may ignore minimum-distance recommendations for new construction near gas stations if they are passed. Still, she welcomes thoughtful, evidence-based restrictions like these to help protect people’s health and safety.

“I hope that the city decides to actually bring in meaningful city-wide reform. Currently, the city has been really hesitant to entertain mass zoning reform that affects the entire city,” Singh said, adding: “I don't think they'll ever do it, not in my lifetime.”

A spokesperson from the city of Mississauga told Canada’s National Observer, it “would update its bylaws accordingly” if the government releases new minimum-distance recommendations. 

Dr. Melissa Lem, family physician and President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, a non-profit organization that argues preventing toxic exposures is critical for human and environmental health, says these kinds of minimum-setback distances are simple solutions that can be implemented with relatively little effort.

“It’s bad news to have communities anywhere close to this kind of infrastructure,” Lem said. “It's low-hanging fruit to prevent new exposures. You don't have to retrofit a whole [neighborhood] … You can actually just prevent those homes from being put there in the first place.”

However, Lem told Canada’s National Observer that there is not enough awareness surrounding benzene and its harms currently to exert pressure for reforms.

“The problem is that we are exposed to benzene across multiple areas in our lives, whether it's when we're pumping gas at the gas station, whether it's burning natural gas in our homes for heating or cooking,” she said, adding Canada isn’t taking “all the measures that we could” to prevent exposure. “We know this is something that's bad for our health and bad for our climate to boot. So…why are people not being more vocal about this? And I think part of the issue is people just don’t know.”