Environmentalists Press Canada, US to Eliminate Toxins Seeping Into Great Lakes

Environmental groups criticized Canada Monday for weak regulations that let toxins seep into the Great Lakes, while urging Canadian and American authorities to take immediate action to "virtually eliminate" problem chemicals.

In a letter addressed to officials of Environment Canada and the US Environmental Protection Agency, 24 NGOs said they had "major concerns" with the implementation of a 2012 binational treaty.

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement had called on both governments to draw up a list of "chemicals of mutual concern" that regulators would focus on when developing environmental protections.

But three years later there are still no chemicals on the list, and the NGOs are criticizing the governments for an overly bureaucratic process that strikes them as "reinventing the wheel."

Fe de Leon, a researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), one of the letter's signatories, says that having a committee investigate which chemicals should be added is a waste of time, since both governments already acknowledge hundreds that are hazardous to human health.

"We're spending a lot of time on evaluating these chemicals when we already have evidence that they're contaminating the Great Lakes," she told VICE news.

Earlier this month, CELA released a report warning that flame retardants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, paraffins and phthalates have been found in the water and sediment of the lakes, and in animals that live there. Though the committee is expected to recommend adding half a dozen of those chemicals to the list this week, de Leon says that's "just scratching the surface." She pointed to a list CELA drew up identifying 500 toxins that researchers have found in the water.

"Work to get toxins out of the Great Lakes is moving so slowly that it may take more than a century to even list all the chemicals of concern currently found in the lakes," CELA said in a press release accompanying the letter.

One of those chemicals is BPA, a plastic that has been banned from baby bottles because of hormone-like effects. Heavy metals like mercury, which can cause developmental delays in children, are also still present in the lakes. CELA's report warns that a long downward trend in heavy metal concentrations has leveled off, and that the government has let them off its radar.

And even for the toxins that wind up on the list, the letter's signatories are concerned that the framework in place for dealing with them is grossly inadequate. The Canadian government's regulations focus on industrial discharge, says de Leon. But toxins are also released into the atmosphere or groundwater when consumers use products that contain them. From there, they find their way to the lakes through runoff or rainfall.

"A lot of the things we're seeing now are much more a result of our everyday living," de Leon said. "We can't control them, and our waste-water treatment is not designed to treat and filter those chemicals."

The letter's main recommendation is to immediately expand the list to include every chemical in the lakes that the governments have already acknowledged to be toxic, and to take action to achieve their "virtual elimination." De Leon says that the Canadian government has only worried about keeping levels down and limiting exposure, ignoring the possibility that even small concentrations of harmful chemicals could endanger human health. She says that, instead of just managing potential toxins, Canada and the US should find safer replacements for them.

"The Canadian government is planning to stick with its outdated Chemicals Management Plan approach of setting "safe limits" and controlling risks for discharges," CELA's press release said, "despite the growing evidence that there is no safe limit for many of the more serious chemicals."

Even if scientists are unsure about the specific levels that could harm people, she said, the mere possibility should be sufficient motivation to keep them out of an ecosystem that provides drinking water for 40 million people.

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