Carcinogens banned at home are sent abroad

(April 07) - Over the next few weeks, you will have lots of opportunity to buy daffodils. Some will be real, some artificial. Some will be in the form of lapel pins. April is daffodil month and people will be knocking on your door asking you to buy some. This is not because of the arrival of spring and the showers that bring May flowers. It’s because of cancer.

The Canadian Cancer Society sends its volunteers out every April to raise money for research into this horrible disease. A lot of this money is still directed to the ambitious goal of discovering a cure. It would be nice if this were to happen, but very unlikely. A cure for cancer is the holy grail of scientific and medical research. One might be out there, so it’s certainly worth a look.

The main emphasis has to be on prevention. Cancer doesn’t just happen without a cause. It happens after something enters the body that doesn’t belong there. Quite frequently this is tobacco smoke. The odd thing about this is that tobacco smoke is the most easily avoidable carcinogen out there. Most of the other ones sneak up while you’re not looking. They are in the air and in the water. If you’re not careful, they could be in your food.

Beginning on April 22, more than 250 chemical pesticide products will be banned in Ontario. This is the positive result of a long campaign by environmentalists. It will prevent exposure to a lot of toxins and carcinogens. The lawn care industry lobbied against this quite strongly, but lush green lawns are going out of fashion. Our communities will be better places without these chemicals. Parents won’t have to be as fearful when their children play outside. There are still risks to be aware of, but they will be significantly reduced this summer. Even dogs will be happier when they don’t have to get their noses up close to freshly sprayed weed killer.

Even without these products, there are still a lot of cancer causing substances all around us. Canadian unions have spent years campaigning for the elimination of carcinogens from workplaces. The Canadian Labour Congress estimates that about 80 per cent of all cancers have environmental causes. They have a particular stake in the issue because of the wide prevalence of occupational cancer. The substances causing it drift out of workplaces to become environmental causes.

One of the worst is asbestos. It has been thoroughly banned everywhere in the country, yet Canada continues to export it to developing countries. Asbestos mining is a big industry in Quebec, and 96 per cent of it is sent overseas. The federal government is a large financial supporter of something called the Chrysotile Institute. What is that, you ask? It used to be called the Asbestos Institute, and it spreads the fiction that asbestos can be used safely in places like Thailand and Indonesia.

An editorial in the October 2008 edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal said: “For several years, Canada has led a ferocious diplomatic opposition” to banning asbestos. “Not a single western democracy supports Canada’s position,” they say, “so Canada has made allies of a few less picky countries including Iran, Russia and Zimbabwe.”

When the cancer society volunteers come knocking on your door this month, buy a daffodil to show your support. For every one you buy, match it with a message to Frank Valeriote. Tell him you want our government to support an international ban on the mining and use of asbestos. We can’t pretend we want to eliminate cancer if we continue to ship it overseas.