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Canadian Environment Awards
The Community Awards 2008
Environmental Health
• Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith
• Clean Air Foundation
• Evergreen
JIM BROPHY AND MARGARET KEITH
Community health advocates
Near the shores of the St. Clair River in southwestern Ontario,
the First Nations community of Aamjiwnaang has long cared for its
sacred land, once part of the tribal domain of the Chippewa. But
by 2003, the community had reached a breaking point. The Aamjiwnaang
Reserve, already bordered by some 15 industrial plants in the heart
of Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, would soon have a new ethanol
facility as its neighbour. In response, the Aamjiwnaang Health and
Environment Committee approached the renowned husband-and-wife team
of Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith, the executive director and occupational
health coordinator, respectively, at the Sarnia Branch of the Occupational
Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc., to help them document the
community’s health issues. “They had a broad list of
concerns,” recalls Brophy. “Sixty to 70 percent of the
kids at daycare were on puffers, and there were lots of developmental
difficulties. In the wider community, there were miscarriages
and cancers.”
The couple’s first step was to provide
the Aamjiwnaang committee with a much-needed interpretation of an
environmental report commissioned in the 1990s, which showed that
the land and creek bed were heavily contaminated with mercury and
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), among other chemicals. To make
the case against the ethanol plant, Brophy and Keith helped identify
existing areas of contamination. With their guidance, the committee
collected samples and had them tested and also documented cases
of deformed animals.
The scientists then employed their signature
reporting method — a questionnaire that the committee used
to obtain the health histories of close to half of the Aamjiwnaang
population. “There’s a prejudice in science that knowledge
comes only from researchers,” says Keith. “It’s
a waste not to use the experience of ordinary people.” They
then showed the committee how to plot the community’s health
problems on life-sized maps of the human body.
“The most alarming finding
in the analysis was the skewed birth trend,” says Brophy. “In
recent years, there were almost two girls born for every boy.” This “selective
male mortality,” he believes, could be linked to the synthetic
organic compounds known as endocrine disrupters that are present
in the releases from area chemical plants.
Ultimately, the Aamjiwnaang
persuaded authorities to find a new location for the ethanol
plant. “This data would never have come to light without the
Aamjiwnaang’s commitment,” says Brophy. “They
believe that if the Earth is healthy, they will be healthy too.”
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CLEAN AIR FOUNDATION
Switch Out and Switch the ’Stat
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| PHOTO: CLEAN AIR FOUNDATION |
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One gram: that’s how little mercury the Clean Air Foundation
says it takes to contaminate an eight-hectare lake and render its fish
inedible. And that’s why the not-for-profit organization
has set its sights on recovering this powerful neurotoxin from two
commonplace sources before it ends up in the waste stream.
Mercury
occurs naturally in the environment in small quantities, but for
the past several hundred years, it has become part of our daily
lives due to a range of industrial and manufacturing processes.
One of the most common uses is in the mercury switches found in
automobile convenience lighting (think trunk lights) and in older
mechanical thermostats. “Today, there are smart alternatives
for some of these primitive technologies,” says Cara Sweeny,
manager of the Switch Out program.
But where do old mercury switches
go when it’s time to retire them? Clean Air’s stock-in-trade
is detecting such policy gaps in environmental stewardship. “We
identified the mercury problem as an area of need,” says
Sweeny, who notes that the first North American phase-out
of mercury switches in cars was completed in 2003. “But with
all the cars that had been produced before that, we knew there was
a lot of work to do.”
Building on a Pollution Probe pilot
project in Ontario, the Clean Air Foundation launched Switch Out
nationally in 2002. The innovative group made it easy for participants
by rolling out a foolproof servicedelivery system, including collection
kits, shipping containers and prepaid courier waybills. Over 450
automotive recyclers across Canada signed on. “They’re
happy to be associated with a best-practices model,” says
Sweeny. Since then, more than 184,000 mercury switches, containing
some 156 kilograms of mercury, have made their way to secure storage.
In 2006, Clean Air doubled the environmental benefit with
the Ontario start-up of its Switch the ’Stat program. “We
wanted to create an incentive,” says Sweeny. “By switching
to programmable thermostats, not only do homeowners lower their
energy consumption and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions but they’re
helping to remove another source of mercury from the marketplace.” With
more than 900 provincial heating and cooling contractors and wholesalers
participating and 24 kilograms of mercury recovered from over 9,500
thermostats, Switch the ’Stat went national this spring.
The
mercury’s rising, but thanks to Clean Air, it’s all
going to a safe home.
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EVERGREEN
National program to create outdoor classrooms for play and learning
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| PHOTO: EVERGREEN FOUNDATION
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Ask most people how to improve a schoolyard, and they will probably
point to a catalogue of play structures. Such conventional wisdom,
however, isn’t doing Canada’s school-aged children any
favours. The Canadian Paediatric Society reports that 25 percent
of children are considered obese due to physical inactivity and
poor diet. “Modern childhood is increasingly spent inside,
in front of electronic media,” says Cam Collyer, director
of Evergreen’s Learning Grounds program. “One of the
fundamental assumptions about schoolyards is that they promote physical
activity. The reality is that too many kids spend recess clustered
by the door, waiting for it to end.”
Learning Grounds proves
that natural landscapes are essential for improving the health and
well-being of Canada’s kids. Since 1991, the Toronto-based
environmental education program has helped 3,000 of the country’s
16,000 schools enhance sterile asphalt-covered fenced playgrounds
with gardens and areas naturalized with native plant species, trees
and flowers. Returning nature to the schoolyard not only provides
children with a stimulating outdoor space but offers them a chance
for a physically active relationship with the environment that will
follow them into adulthood. “When kids become stewards of
the environment, powerful things happen,” explains Collyer. “A
switch gets turned on, and with it comes a sense of caring and joy
and a connection to the community.”
Success at participating
schools has taken many forms: the naturalized areas engage students’ minds
in a diversity of activities, from planting and tending flower
and vegetable gardens to nature study of creepy-crawly insects,
butterflies, birds and amphibians. They also allow for innovative
learning opportunities in other subject areas supported logistically
by Learning Grounds’ lesson plans, teaching aids and outdoor
teacher-training seminars. Teachers and principals describe how
the projects calm schoolyard tensions and foster respect and co-operation. “All
the big life lessons are contained in the garden,” says Collyer. “The
kids learn to nurture something. They learn to cope with disappointment,
and they learn about delayed gratification — to wait
for the results of their work. When they bite into a carrot or tomato
from the garden, they’re excited. Kids accept food they won’t
normally eat if they’ve grown it themselves.”
With the
help of Learning Grounds, childhood is finding its way back outdoors.
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