Fort Chipewyan is a small community that sits on Lake Athabasca in the northeast corner of Alberta. It boasts magnificent attributes like Wood Buffalo National Park’s wild buffalo herd, the proud traditions of the Athabasca and Mikisew Cree Peoples, and its history as the first European settlement in Alberta in 1788. While only accessible by plane or winter ice roads, the community has always enjoyed a healthy tourism industry.
Now, Ft Chipewyan can also boast the dubious distinction of having one of the world’s highest rates of cholangiocarcinoma – a rare cancer of the bile duct. Along with cholangiocarcinoma, Ft Chipewyan is home to elevated levels of endocrine cancers like testicular and uterine, lymphatic cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, and cervical and colon cancers. Immunodeficiency disorders like lupus and Grave’s disease are also prevalent. With only 915 residents, this litany of ailments is particularly shocking.
“Statistically speaking, there should be only one case [of cholangiocarcinoma] for every 100,000 people, and none at all for a community the size of Fort Chipewyan.” The local fly-in doctor, John O’Connor told the Globe and Mail in 2006. According to Dr. O’Connor, the level of illness seen in the community was unparalleled by any of the other northern towns where he provides treatment. The difference: Ft Chipewyan is the only of his serviced communities that draws their water directly from Lake Athabasca or its tributary, the Athabasca River.
Lake Athabasca has historically courted development because of uranium and gold deposits along its northern shoreline, active sandunes, and excellent trout fishery. It is fed by the Athabasca River, which originates at the Columbia Glacier in what is now Jasper National Park, cutting a diagonal swath across the entire province of Alberta. Along the Athabasca River lies much of Alberta’s oil industry along with paper mills and now defunct uranium mines.
Oil refineries, for their part, do not deny dumping waste water into the river, which continues on past Lake Athabaska into the Arctic Ocean. The oil refining process in Alberta takes place in large sandy pits where a tar-like substance known as bitumen is separated from sand, clay and peat and later processed into oil. The Athabasca Oil Sands is unusual in that its bitumen is most efficiently extracted through surface mining – a straightforward process where hot water and caustic soda is poured on the sand and then piped to an extraction plant where the substance is agitated and the bitumen skimmed off the top and sent for further refining into crude oil. After the bitumen is extracted, the sand and waste is returned to the mines, where it can contaminate the river through water runoff. In fact, Suncor Energy Inc – one of the biggest oil companies in Canada – admits to releasing their waste water into the river. They add, however, that they test the water and maintain hydrocarbon chemicals below Alberta’s legal limit.
Following Dr. O’Connor’s assertions that the disease levels had to have an environmental origin – a sentiment that had been expressed by community members for several years – Health Canada, Alberta’s Health and Wellness department and the Alberta Cancer Board teamed up to conduct an investigation in the spring of 2006. The results were disappointing to the community: they found no evidence of unnaturally high chemical or mineral run-off in the water that could explain the cancer and illness rates.
Now, a study commissioned by the local medical authorities in Ft Chipewyan and conducted by Treeline Environmental Research has found unnaturally high levels of arsenic and mercury in the water, embankment and fish supply, which is a staple food for First Nation people. Most disturbingly, however, is the increased level of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – a known carcinogen that originates in tar and tar-like substances. While the study concluded that the town’s treated drinking water was safe, ingestion of the affected fish could be a major contributor to the cancer cluster.
While the new study does not directly finger Alberta’s oil industry, the implication is clear. Alberta is the world’s second largest exporter of crude oil and makes Canada the largest oil exporter to the United States. In fact, projections estimate that the Athabasca Oil Sands has an amount of non-conventional oil in its reserve that is equal to the conventional oil reserves of the entire world. In other words, Athabasca Oil Sands could contribute 1.6 trillion barrels of oil. As the Albertan and Canadian governments conducted their evaluation of toxicity in the Athabasca waterways, many wondered if a conflict of interest would prevent a fair survey.
The results of the Treeline investigation would seem to suggest that ulterior motives may have blinded Health Canada’s investigators to the realities in Ft Chipewyan. Though a spokesman for Alberta’s Department of Health and Wellness told the New York Times this week that the government stood behind their own study. They found that Ft. Chipewyan suffered “no higher instance of cancer…than the rest of the province.”
