Canada’s Toxic Mess
Tar sands production in Alberta, Canada, has shot up considerably in recent years, from 482,000 barrels a day in 1995 to 1.3 million barrels a day in 2008, destroying bird habitat and leaving barren landscapes along the way. Some 205 square miles have been cleared or disturbed by mining operations, and tailing ponds cover more than 50 square miles. Pollution from tar sands development is monitored by an industry-and-government collaborative known as the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program, or RAMP, which tests the Athabasca River and other waterways for the presence of toxic chemicals contained in bitumen — the semisolid form of oil that is extracted from the sands. OnEarth first reported on the effects of tar-sands mining in 2007 (" Canada’s Highway to Hell ," by Andrew Nikiforuk), and in December, a group of researchers led by David Schindler of the University of Alberta published a study that found RAMP’s estimates to be much too low. The molecules they detected indicate that some of the pollution clearly came from refineries, not from natural seeps. "The concentrations we found in the river are within the range known to be toxic to fish embryos," Schindler says.
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Canada’s Toxic Mess