Environment Committee on March 20th, 2007

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So if I understand this point clearly, the government's actions in December, while moving in the right direction, the thing added by this bill is the continued release of PFOS and other industrial processes right now.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

Yes, that's part of what it would do.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There seems to be some challenge of this, Mr. Carreau, in terms of what's happening on the industrial side if what's being suggested in the Stockholm Convention and what's in place in England is not suggesting any alternatives. Clearly, they have this industrial sector as well. Are there not substitutions available for PFOS in this part of the industrial process?

[Greg Carreau]

Of the 50% that are referenced in the Gazette publication, there are a number of control technologies that are available to the metal-plating sector as a whole. Basically it's a bath that they put the metal plating in. There's an option where you put a closed cover on top so that the fumes don't come out of it.

Fifty percent of that industry sector is using a fume suppressant. The other half is using the other technologies, like a closed cover or other control technologies. Of the 50% that are using a fume suppressant, virtually all of them are using PFOS. There is 50% of the metal-plating sector that we anticipate is using a PFOS substance, but all of them are using the fume suppressant. Because of the distinct and unique operations within that industry sector, they have to use a fume suppressant--it is an essential qualification.

The EU recently published a directive in December 2006 that did reference the chromium and metal-plating sector as an exemption. Although the U.S. EPA has not published an exemption for the metal-plating sector, it is under consideration under the 2006 significant new use rule that they published in 2006.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This is an important piece, and I'll go back to Mr. Khatter for this.

I appreciate that you're not an expert on this particular part of the industrial process, but an important consideration in CEPA, or when we go and list substances this way as suggested by Bill C-298, is that there is some substitution available. We're trying to see the implications of this bill going ahead and passing into law. If it were to do so, from what you're hearing today, are there any considerations the committee would have to make for some part of the industrial sector, or can they simply adapt, by your opinion?

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

As you say, I don't have the clear answer on whether the exemptions for the chrome-plating and electroplating sectors are rational. There's a contradiction internationally, where the U.S. originally did not exempt it and is considering exempting it now; the EU is considering exempting the sector; the international ban at the moment, which is widely supported, will not exempt the sector; and the U.K. has no plans to exempt the sector either.

What having virtual elimination on top of these prohibitions with exceptions will do—and again, we're talking about prohibitions that are allowing people to still use PFOS in these sectors—is deal with the emissions from those sectors, if we are going to allow this exemption to go forward. I think it still needs more study and some transparency. We need to at least be controlling the emissions from the use of those sectors, how PFOS is disposed of, and how much PFOS pollutes when the platers are using it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Cullen, your time is up.

We'll go to Mr. Warawa, please.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here. I'd also like to thank the Honourable Maria Minna, who is the author of Bill C-298, for bringing this bill to this committee.

The focus of my questioning is to provide the right tools to deal with PFOS. I think that's the intent of Dr. Khatter and also the staff here. Environment Canada has said we need to get rid of PFOS, and right now its use is being prohibited.

What we see in Bill C-298--and Dr. Khatter has a recommendation--is that PFOS should be on the virtual elimination list. We've heard from Mr. Moffet that that may not be the best tool or the most practical way of dealing with it.

I would like specific recommendations from Dr. Khatter and Mr. Moffet as to how they would change Bill C-298 to be the tool that achieves what we all want to see happen here.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

Well, I'm not sure that we've proposed any amendments as to how to change it. I think we're pretty happy with it the way it is. We understand there will be a statutory requirement for the moment, if you put it on the virtual elimination list, to look at the level of quantification before you look at release limits.

Although that isn't necessarily appropriate, as Environment Canada has said, for PFOS where it's in consumer products, that will be completely appropriate for the use of it in the chrome-plating and electroplating sector, if we're going to continue to allow that usage.

I don't think at the moment that PollutionWatch has a proposal for amending Bill C-298. We think that adding it to the virtual elimination list on top of the prohibitions is a rational approach.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay, so you're still supporting virtual elimination, regardless of the testimony that we've heard.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

Yes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

Mr. Moffet, could you make a recommendation or advise the committee on what would be appropriate tools within Bill C-298?

[John Moffet]

Bill C-298 requires the minister to do three things: first, add PFOS to the VE list; second, specify a level of quantification; and third, make regulations prescribing the quantity or concentration that may be released into the environment.

My testimony earlier suggested that the latter two things won't add value. Developing an LOQ won't do anything in the context of the prohibition regulations, nor will creating release regulations, which could specify any amount and which could be addressing any or all aspects of release or sources of release. The statute's very vague.

So, again, I come back to the possible international symbolic importance of adding a substance to the VE list. The department wouldn't have any objection to limiting the bill to that step.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay, thank you. That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Good. Thank you.

I'd like to thank our guests. Mr. Carreau, you made it, and with no beeper. Hopefully, it all goes well later with your beeper.

We will just suspend for a moment to change witnesses, and we'll go on to Bill C-307.

[John Moffet]

Mr. Chairman, I'll just clarify that there will not be an Environment Canada representative at the table for the next bill, which is a Health Canada bill. Mr. Chénier will remain. If there are technical questions, he'll be available to answer them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Moffet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

If I could call us back to order, we are again going to be in somewhat of a time crunch. I would again ask our witnesses to please keep their comments to five minutes, and I'll also ask our members to keep their questioning to five minutes on the first round. It's the only way we're going to be able to get through this.

If we could, we're beginning on Bill C-307. I would ask our first witness, Mr. Upshall, to please begin.

[Phil Upshall, National Executive Director, Mood Disorders Society of Canada]

Why am I first?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

It's because you're first on the list.

[Phil Upshall]

That's exciting.

Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to be here.

My apologies to all of you for not having the opportunity to submit a brief.

The Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health and the entire mental health community have been involved in the advocacy for the Canadian Mental Health Commission, which was recently established in the budget. We've concentrated there.

However, I have instructions to tell you that we're honoured to have the opportunity to make a presentation here this morning, brief though it may be, about raising awareness of mental illness and brain damage caused by toxins, particularly phthalates, in this instance.

We support the general implications of the bill. Particularly with regard to baby products and products aimed at pregnant women, we think it's quite appropriate to ban the substances.

At this stage of the game, I'm a past member of the advisory board for the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. I've consulted Dr. Rémi Quirion on this issue, and he's advised me that there has not been adequate research in this area from a mental illness or brain damage perspective. He would recommend that until there is research, this type of substance should be banned because of the implications and the work that's been done in the European Commission.

Suffice it to say that we appreciate the opportunity to be here. We support the bill, and we support greater awareness of committee members on issues relating to brain damage and corresponding mental illnesses, including depression, that follow from neurological issues.

I'll leave it there to keep the ball rolling. If there's anything I can help you with, I'd be happy to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Good. Thank you, Mr. Upshall. I appreciate that.

Ms. Brody.

[Charlotte Brody, Executive Director, Commonweal]

Thank you.

I'm a registered nurse, and I was one of the founders of Health Care Without Harm in 1996. Health Care Without Harm is an international campaign on environmental responsibility in the health care industry. In that first year, in 1996, it was part of my job to review the science on phthalates to decide whether or not there was enough to include it in the original mission and goals of Health Care Without Harm.

At that time there were a few studies about phthalates as a carcinogen, some about phthalates as a cardiotoxic chemical, but there wasn't enough. I recommended against including phthalates in the first mission and goals of Health Care Without Harm, because compared to dioxin, compared to mercury, there just wasn't a lot of science there. But in just a few years, in three years, there were so many studies that had been done that were so profound in looking at phthalates not as a carcinogen but as a reproductive toxin that we were part of the effort at the national toxicology program in the United States to look at phthalates and have it listed as a reproductive toxin.

Then my history as a nurse in a neonatal intensive unit became useful, because the research docs, the toxicologists who were in the NTP, really hadn't spent much time in NICU and didn't understand the multiple exposures that a child could have from the tube giving nourishment, the tube giving air, the tube giving IV fluids, the isolate itself, the vinyl gloves of a nurse. All of those were different exposures that needed to add up.

At the same time, there were new studies that showed that you really had to think about exposure to different phthalates in a cumulative way so that the phthalates from the shower curtain made out of vinyl and the phthalates from the vinyl dashboard in your car got added to the phthalates in medical devices, got added to the phthalates in cosmetics, and between them could be enough to cause harm, especially to babies in the womb and very young children.

In 2000 NTP found DEHP to be a reproductive toxin, and Health Care Without Harm worked with the FDA to issue a public health notification. We got to spend a lot of time in hospitals that were trying to implement this new public health notification. We realized, and this is what I've come to talk to you today about, that it's not enough to label, and it's not enough to label and educate, because when a baby presents in a neonatal intensive care unit, that's the wrong time for the physician or for the parent to be specifying DEHP-free. You want every device that can be free of DEHP, and there are always going to be some exceptions, to be phthalate-free if possible.

Since the NTP made its findings in 2000, there have been 150 studies on the reproductive toxicity of DEHP and other phthalates. I want to tell you about four of them that came out in the last twelve months. A 2006 study of vinyl flooring factory workers in China showed that these workers had higher levels of DBP and DEHP than a control population, and lower levels of free testosterone. A 2006 study from Finland tied DHP from vinyl wall coverings to adult onset asthma in office workers. A Boston study found that men with more DBP had impaired sperm quality than at levels that you find in the general population. And a German study of rats showed that low levels of DHP suppressed the activity of the key enzyme that's necessary for the masculization of the brain.

The findings of each of these studies is supported by most of the hundred plus other pieces of peer-reviewed research. While there are confounding reports, often funded by industry, the weight of the evidence is that the DHP, BBP, DBP, and other phthalates are toxic to the male reproductive system, that they are anti-androgens, interfering with a male rat or a baby boy's in utero capacity to become male.

Let me just explain how it works. All of us start out as girls in the womb, and then if you have a Y chromosome, the body is lightly bathed in a wash of testosterone, and that's what turns female embryos into male babies. Phthalates seem to interfere with the testosterone bath. What we see is what's called testicular dysgenesis syndrome, TDS, that's linked to testicular cancer, undescended testes, hypospadias, and low sperm counts. I want to suggest to you that those are the parts of being male that we can see, and that we have reason to be concerned about what anti-androgens are also doing to the parts of maleness that we can't see.

Given the cumulative properties of phthalates, and given that phthalates cross the placenta, and given the alarming CDC data on phthalates in women of childbearing age, some of us in Health Care Without Harm worry that what good was it doing us to get phthalates out of medical devices where we could, if women were going to present in labour already full of phthalates?

So we started looking for phthalates on the labels of personal care products, because we knew phthalates were in women at higher levels than in men. When we couldn't find them on the labels, except for nail polish, we did our own testing and found phthalates in 72% of the products we tested.

I brought you one of the products we tested. This is actually from the sample. This is Poison, by Christian Dior--aptly named--which had more phthalates than any other product we tested. I brought it today because while you would think that while it had BBP and DEHP and DP and DBP in 2002, something would have changed in the five years since then. But at the beginning of this year, January 2007, Consumer Reports did their own follow-up testing of phthalates in personal care products. They tested both the European and the U.S. versions of Poison and still found DEHP and DBP in the products.

I want to close by saying why I think that's really important.

Christian Dior doesn't add DEHP on purpose. When they add the fragrance, the DEHP is there. In the same way, the manufacturers of teething rings or rubber duckies aren't adding phthalates on purpose; they're making products out of vinyl, and the phthalates are in the vinyl. So it's very important in the language of these bills that it not just be what's voluntarily added, but actually what's in the product to be able to actually enforce the law in the way you want to. If there is language like that, we're going to be continuing the don't look, don't tell, don't test, and deny-and-spread-doubt culture. That culture dominates current chemical policy in the United States. And I have come all this way from California because I am hopeful that we will be able to change that situation soon in the U.S., both federally and in the states, especially if we have your leadership.

So let me just close by saying that as a nurse, as someone who has followed the phthalate science, as someone who was an early doubter of the danger of phthalates, but mostly as a mother of sons and as someone who is a little bit desperate to become a grandmother, I urge you to pass the strongest possible bill. I am proud to be a woman, but I want my sons and my grandsons to grow up to be the men they were supposed to be, not the products of phthalate contamination.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thanks, Ms. Brody.

We did manage to arrange a minus-27 wind chill for you just to welcome you to Canada. It will get better if you stay a day or two.

We would go to Ms. Goldman, please.

[Dr. Mindy Goldman, Canadian Blood Services / Héma-Québec]

Mr. Chairman, honourable committee members, fellow witnesses, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank the committee members for inviting me to speak here today.

My name is Dr. Mindy Goldman, and I'm an executive medical director with Canadian Blood Services.

I consulted my colleagues at Héma-Québec. I'm here today representing Canada's two suppliers of blood.

I was a member of the Health Canada expert advisory committee panel on DEHP and medical devices, as was Dr. Khatter, I think. I'm here to address four words in the bill: other than blood bags. I hope that's all I'm supposed to address.

Blood is collected in sterile, single-use plastic collection sets, and it's then separated into different components. The main components are plasma, platelets, and red cell concentrates. Because plasma is stored frozen there is no leaching of the DEHP from the plastic into the product during storage. Most platelet storage bags do not contain DEHP. In addition, platelets can only be stored for five days, so there's very little time for the DEHP to leach into the component.

Red cell components, however, are stored at one degree to six degrees for up to 42 days, and these conditions do permit substantial leaching to occur. The concentration of DEHP increases with the length of time of storage. Interestingly, DEHP plays an important role in the actual survival of the red blood cells themselves. Currently, red cell components can be stored for 42 days, or six weeks. Without DEHP, storage beyond 21 days, or three weeks, is not possible. Such a reduction in storage period would have a major impact on blood inventory and availability. Other plasticizers do not have the same stabilizing effect on the red cell membrane.

Based on animal toxicity data, the Health Canada expert advisory committee considered that newborns, infants, and young children receiving large amounts of red cells would be at greatest risk for possible transfusion-related DEHP toxicity. Unfortunately, there have been few studies evaluating long-term DEHP toxicity in transfusion recipients.

One study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in 2004 followed adolescents exposed to very large amounts of DEHP as neonates, and found normal growth and endocrine function. However, although the study was reassuring, the small number of patients involved does not really permit firm conclusions about the lack of toxicity of DEHP.

The Health Canada expert advisory panel made several recommendations that are relevant to blood transfusion. Following the recommendations, both Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec added a section to our circular of information, just like our product insert, that we distribute to our hospitals about DEHP. Physicians are advised to select fresh or red cell components that would contain less DEHP for large-volume transfusions in susceptible populations, and to remove some of the liquid part of the red cell component prior to transfusion to further reduce the amount of DEHP present.

The Canadian Pediatric Society recommends the use of fresh or red cell components for large-volume transfusions in these patient groups for various reasons, including reduced DEHP exposure.

In summary, DEHP is present in certain blood components, particularly those containing red blood cells. It is essential for the preservation of red blood cells for up to 42 days. Both information from the blood suppliers and recommendations from professional organizations attempt to reduce DEHP exposure in the most vulnerable patient groups.

Thank you for your attention.