Councillor Sprovieri’s Latest “Fluoride Alert”

Councillor Sprovieri’s Latest “Fluoride Alert”

Sent Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 2:26 PM

Email Subject: Toronto Star: Cord blood, blood and hair tests show mercury exposure in Grassy Narrows

 

Mayor Jeffrey, Mayor Crombie, Mayor Thompson, Chair Dale, Councillor Carolyn Parish Chair of the suspended Community Water Fluoridation Committee, Dr. Hopkins Medical Officer of Health, Nancy Polsinelli Commissioner of Health Services, Councillor Moore Chair of the Health Committee, Patrick O’Connor Regional Solicitor, members of Council and members of the Media,

 

As you can read in the article below, Health Canada and the Province were aware that the River where the people of Grassy Narrows fished for their food was polluted with high levels of Mercury for decades and never told the people that were being poisoned and affected daily.

In the article the former Ontario Minister of the Environment Glen Murray states, ‘”I have never seen a case of such gross neglect. I am embarrassed as a Canadian that this has ever happened.

 

I am sending this article to all, because it is well known today that the Water Fluoridation product Hodrofluorosilicic Acid fluorideVsLeadArsenicToxicity[HFSA] used to artificially fluoridate the Region of Peel’s drinking water supply contains Fluoride which is just as toxic as Lead, and Arsenic. The strange and unexplained fact is that Health Canada, the Province and the US EPA allows, 15 parts per billion [PPB] of Lead, 10 PPB of Arsenic and 4000 PPB of Fluoride in our drinking water.

As you may recall, on February 2017 Regional Council received the recommendation from the Community Water Fluoridation Committee and approved resolution 2017-68 dated February 22, 2017. As you may also recall, the resolution stated’Municipal Councillors do not have the detailed familiarity to interpid data regarding the efficacy of Hydrofluorosilicic Acid [HFSA] in water fluoridation treatments and are struggling with a range of conflicting reports and public concerns on the matter of Fluoridation.’’

 

In the same resolution Council requested the Minister to undertake appropriate and Comprehensive Toxicity Testing Necessary to Reassure the Public that the use of HFSA in water treatments is Safe.

As you are all aware, a year will have passed next week and the Minister of Health and long term care has not acknowledge nor respond to Councils request to do the Health Canada required Toxicology Reviews and Safety Concerns.

I am asking everyone of you, what will you say when this matter goes to Court and the Judge asks everyone of us, ‘’Why did you approve adding a Toxic and dangerous substance into your residents Drinking water Supply without the necessary Toxicology studies or reviews required by Health Canada, that would determine the safety levels of the Toxic and hazardous substance [Fluoride]?”

 

A Councillor with a Conscience,
John Sprovieri.

 

Toronto Star:

Cord blood, blood and hair tests show mercury exposure in Grassy Narrows

 Results support what people here have been saying for decades: That they have been exposed to dangerously high levels of mercury and younger generations have likely been affected as well.

Media: Toronto Star

By: Jayme Poisson, Investigative Reporter and David Bruser, Investigative Reporter

Date: February 12, 2018

GRASSY NARROWS FIRST NATION, Ont.—Chrissy Swain was one of hundreds of infants on this reserve who, between 1970 and 1992, had their umbilical cord blood tested for mercury by the federal government.

While Health Canada stored the data for decades in boxes in its archives, Swain, who only recently received her test results, grew up with problems that could be attributed to mercury poisoning. Her mother took her to a doctor as a toddler because she was clumsy. Into adulthood, her hands began to tingle. Today, she can’t open bottles.

Swain’s reading showed a mercury concentration of 17.5 parts per billion (ppb) — more than double the level that Health Canada currently finds concerning — and would trigger additional testing and dietary advice for children and women under 50, according to the regulator. It is three times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold.

Research shows her level is high enough to have increased her risk of having had learning disabilities or motor skill deficits as a child and, as an adult, a heart condition or accelerated aging.

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“I don’t even know how to process it,” said Swain, 37. “I just think about everybody else, too, who was born” during the period.

For decades, this data documenting mercury exposure in Grassy Narrows and nearby Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nation sat in 91 banker’s boxes in Thunder Bay and Ottawa. The sampling began eight years after a paper mill 100 kilometres upstream, in Dryden dumped 10 tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River that is the lifeblood of the community.

The government also has thousands of hair and blood samples taken from children and adults between 1970 and 2000. So far, Health Canada says it has results of 3,674 hair and blood samples from 868 people from Grassy Narrows, and a further 216 cord blood results. From Whitedog, it has 4,789 hair and blood sample and 141 cord blood results from 1,033 people. In some cases, results from more than 50 samples were handwritten on index cards.

At the time the samples were taken, residents whose mercury levels were considered too high received letters from Health Canada with advice. One recent letter sent by the regulator included recommendations such as eat “less fish that eat other fish” or “eat smaller fish” to reduce exposure. Many say they either lost their results or don’t remember getting anything.

And while the mothers of the cord blood babies should have been informed, the information wasn’t always passed on.

“Maybe my mother wasn’t aware of what was being signed or what was being taken,” said Alana Pahpasy, who also recently received her results. They are even higher than Swain’s: 35.66 ppb (or more than four times the current Canadian level of concern of eight ppb for women and children.)

“I do feel violated, I do feel wronged,” said Pahpasy, 38. “Like the government has known all along about this mercury contamination and they haven’t been letting us know.”

For more than two years, the people here have been trying to obtain their individual data. Health Canada initially did not respond to requests and then told community representatives it would be released only with identifying information removed, citing privacy concerns. Community leaders ended up getting hundreds of people to sign consent forms.

Late last year, the government began sending results to individuals who had signed consent forms, as well as to Dr. Donna Mergler, a scientist from Université du Québec à Montréal who specializes in environmental pollutants, and who is working in collaboration with Grassy Narrows. She is analyzing the raw data for big-picture results and linking it to the current health of the community (something that has never been done).

The Star obtained data from several individuals and it supports what the people here have been saying for decades: Residents have been exposed to dangerously high levels of mercury and younger generations have probably been affected as well.

A Mercury Disability Board, set up in the mid-1980s after Grassy Narrows and Whitedog settled with the federal and provincial governments and two paper companies, has been criticized as inadequate. Roughly 70 per cent of applicants have been turned down for compensation.

Swain, a mother of three, had not applied but after getting her results she is now. Pahpasay says she was rejected previously.

The criteria for an award have not changed for decades, something residents say does not reflect what is known about the effects of mercury on human health today.

For example, when Swain and Pahpasay were born, Health Canada was using a higher threshold for concern of 20 ppb. At this level, Swain would have been considered not at risk.

More recent science tells us that mercury poisoning occurs at levels previously thought harmless. A 2016 study of school-age Inuit children in Quebec found those with cord blood mercury levels greater than 7.5 ppb were four times more likely to have an IQ score below 80, the clinical cut-off for borderline intellectual disabilities.

Pahpasay said she gets muscle twitches throughout her body and that her hands shake, something “I’ve just come to think is normal.”

The contamination of Grassy Narrows began in 1962. Reed Paper, the company that owned the mill, used the metal to bleach paper and then dumped it into the water. The mercury dumping lasted eight years, contaminating the fish for more than 250 km downstream and poisoning the people who ate it.

Locals started noticing something was wrong after fish began floating to the river’s surface, turkey vultures started to fly as if drunk and mink and otter disappeared.

In the years since, as independent scientists sounded alarms, government official after government official repeated that the river was cleaning itself naturally of mercury and that there was no ongoing source of the neurotoxin.

Over the past 18 months, the Star has revealed that fish downstream near Grassy Narrows remain the most contaminated in the province, that there is mercury-contaminated soil and river sediment at the site of the old mill, and the provincial government knew in the 1990s that mercury was visible in soil under that site and never told anyone in the communities. Scientists strongly suspect that old mercury still contaminates the mill site and is polluting the river.

Last year, the province committed $85 million to clean the river and the federal government promised $5 million to build a home for people suffering from mercury pollution. “I have never seen a case of such gross neglect. I am embarrassed as a Canadian that this ever happened,” former Ontario environment minister Glen Murray said last year.

Here in Grassy Narrows, as more becomes known about the legacy of mercury contamination and more people receive their blood, hair and cord blood test results, time is measured in two parts — before and after the mercury was dumped.

Before, most people worked in the local fishing and trapping industries, catering to tourists taking daytrips to catch walleye. After, the jobs disappeared. And the community has been plagued with intractable problems that affect First Nations communities across the country: extreme poverty, alcoholism, drug addition and suicides.

Through it all, Rosemary Ashopenace has kept her father Roger Williamson’s test results, which she was given years ago by a health worker. They are “absolutely outrageous,” according to Dr. David Carpenter, the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, who reviewed the results for the Star.

“(Mercury is) primarily a neurotoxin. It’s extraordinarily dangerous,” Carpenter said, adding that levels like Williamson’s would put him at risk for sleep disorders, anxiety, irritability and “even blatant psychosis.”

Science has established an association between mercury and an increased risk of heart attack and accelerated aging in adults. There is also some evidence that mercury exposure increases the risk for Type II diabetes, but it is inconsistent.

Williamson’s family last heard from him in May 1986 when he was headed to work at a fishing lodge near Winnipeg. Williamson has been missing ever since.

Over the years, Ashopenace, who is now 43, has received calls from the Winnipeg police asking if the family wants him removed from the missing person list and declared dead.

As some point, she knows she has to close the case but she’s conflicted.

“Maybe he has no where to go? Or maybe he’s so mercury minded (he) don’t know where he lives?” she writes on Facebook. “I know my dad loved his kids . . . why isn’t he trying to communicate? . . . Maybe he’s not even on this earth.”

Ashopenace’s results, taken when she was 3, show her blood level measured just above eight ppb, just above the threshold for concern.

“Especially in a 3-year-old that’s a very dangerous period of time,” Carpenter said. Children exposed to mercury, he said, are at risk of development issues with language and fine motor skills.

Today, Ashopenace gets bad headaches and is depressed. Her feet and hands tingle. And there is something wrong with her uterus, she said. A doctor told her husband she would have to get her tubes tied, she said.

She has applied for mercury compensation and been rejected.

Some physical symptoms of mercury include headaches, tunnel vision and disturbances in sensation. The latter is a symptom that Erica Fischer says she lives with near constantly.

Fisher is from Whitedog, the sister reserve to Grassy Narrows. It has been equally affected by the contamination, but receives less attention, partly due to Grassy Narrows’ tireless community advocates, including its chiefs and environmental health co-ordinator Judy DaSilva who has made it her life’s work. The community has also caught the attention of high-profile environmentalists like David Suzuki and authors Margaret Atwood and Vincent Lam, who is also a medical doctor.

Fisher, who is 31, also recently received her results. In 1990, when she was 4, her blood equivalent mercury concentration was 23.64 ppb (almost three times the Canadian level of concern for children today). She remembers fishing as a young child, spending entire days on the water.

She says she experiences dizziness and gets the shakes. Her hands often turn numb, as if they have fallen asleep. When Fisher was 9, she underwent a neuropsychological assessment. A memory test found that she had trouble recalling the details of a story immediately afterward, but did better after 20 minutes had passed — a quality “common to children with attention difficulties.”

“Sometimes I’m scared of driving. … I’m scared I can’t feel my hands so I really have to squeeze my hands tight to make sure I have a grip on it,” she says, adding she once accidentally dropped a knife and cut her hand. “I couldn’t feel a thing and it was gushing blood.” When she talks about holding her newborn daughter she begins to cry.

“When I’d be holding her, it broke my heart sometimes that I couldn’t feel her.”

Fisher does receive compensation of $600 per month from the disability board.

“I think I could have been more active, maybe in sport. I’m not super intelligent,” she says.

“Maybe I would have finished college. Maybe I would have finished university. There are some things that I think I could have done.”

Jayme Poisson can be reached at (416) 814-2725 or jpoisson@thestar.caDavid Bruser can be reached at (416) 869-4282 or dbruser@thestar.ca