Environment Committee on April 26th, 2007

[Stephen Dibert]

Vulnerable populations, again, if the products that are used are scientifically proven to be safe and effective, then there's no problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Vellacott.

Mr. Lussier.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I trust that Canadian and American products manufactured by our vinyl or plastics industries are tested for the presence of phtalates, but are imported products also tested?

For example, in my municipality, in my riding, there is a fairly large Chinese community involved in the import/export business. For example, Dollarama stores that sell all kinds of products manufactured in China are doing very well. How do you think those products are monitored?

[Marion Axmith]

That is an excellent question.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

But it should be put to the Department of Health.

[Marion Axmith]

I have wondered many times about that.

It's a challenge for the government to monitor those products that are coming into this country, especially products intended to be used by children. They need to monitor those products. They need to test those products. And perhaps it would be Health Canada that would test those products, take them off the shelves and test those products to see what is in them, because I feel that imported products should meet the same high standards as do the products manufactured in the United States and Canada. Those imported products should be expected to meet those same standards.

That is an excellent question.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Ms. Stanley, do you have the same concerns in the United States?

[Marian Stanley]

It's difficult for me to speak to the plastics industry because I represent the manufacturers of the additive--and only of one particular additive.

I know there are concerns that old technology is used in places like Russia, China, and that they're not meeting the same standards being met in the United States and Canada. Now, where North American companies may have opened up a plant, materials sold into the regions from those plants would meet the same standards as they meet in North America, or in Europe for that matter. But many times it is the state-run agencies or the state-run plants that aren't giving concern to workers, to process, or to the environment.

Certainly I've been in discussions with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to try to make sure the same standards are met in places like China. It's a challenge.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Axmith, in your brief, you mention resin manufacturers, additive suppliers, plastic compounders, developers and recyclers.

Do you recycle products that are imported from China?

[Marion Axmith]

Not necessarily. I should clarify that over 70% of all vinyl resin goes into building and construction products, which are used for many decades--many, many, years.

Our particular focus at the present time is in the construction area, when those products come out of use. We're establishing an infrastructure to recapture and recycle those products, but those products would have been made in Canada.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you know if there are still any phtalates in older recycled products? Do the phtalates present in plastic disappear after 10 or 20 years of use? Does the concentration of phtalates decrease? If not, are they still present in those products?

[Marion Axmith]

Well, on the technical side, I would defer to Marian. I can tell you, if you're going to recycle a flexible product, you need to recycle it into another flexible product, not necessarily the same product.

Marian.

[Marian Stanley]

For the last eight years we've been conducting research at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. We've been looking at the fate of phthalate esters in the environment. We know they biodilute. They do not bioaccumulate. They don't stay in the environment.

We've been looking at about 26 different species. As you go up the species range, you get fewer and fewer phthalates, so they do biodilute. We know they're not around forever.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We'll go on to Mr. Cullen, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I was asking our research friends a question. I was curious as to whether you could still get a mercury filling in Canada. It's a neuro-disrupter. It's one of the most toxic elements we make. There are those in this room, and there are Canadians today, who are still getting mercury fillings put into their mouths.

The reason I bring it up is that it's an interesting example of the amount of inertia we can have, as a society, as a manufacturing base, as dentists who are concerned about our health and will continue to put a known toxin into our mouths. I think it's instructive about over-relying on government and well-meaning officials to always protect us to the levels we would hope, particularly when we're talking about these vulnerable populations.

I have a question for Mr. Cammack. Does Baxter make--and I hate to quiz you on this, because I know you'll get in trouble if you don't know the answer--cardiopulmonary bypass equipment, transfusion equipment, exchange transfusion, hemodialysis, TPN or lipophilic drug formulations?

[Jon Cammack]

We do make some of those products, certainly for hemodialysis. We make dialyzers, dialysis tubing, TPN containers and tubing.

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

Are you making alternatives without DEHP among those products right now?

[Jon Cammack]

Yes, and we have been for many years. The reason is the functionality. TPN is a good example. It has not been common practice for many years, for Baxter and most of the industry, to store, for example, lipids in PVC, because the PVC withdraws enough DEHP out of the material that it can't act functionally correctly.

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

Picking up on Mr. Rota's point, this may be a bit of a point of confusion. On the one hand end it seems we've heard testimony today to not worry about these particular chemicals. On the other hand, if they leak out of a product, there is some concern for that, so there's an alternative where those phthalates don't exist in the—

[Jon Cammack]

Let me be clear. Maybe I didn't say it quite correctly.

It is all about function. It's all about the right material for the right applications.

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

You're not concerned about the actual health effects of phthalates in medical products?

[Jon Cammack]

Let me finish. I think it will answer your question.

Let's stay with TPN—you mentioned TPN. If a manufacturer were to store lipids in a PVC DEHP-plasticized container, there would be enough DEHP taken out of the material that the container couldn't function in the way it needs to function properly; it wouldn't vent correctly. So yes, there would be a health risk in that the medical product wasn't acting in the way it needs to act to deliver the therapy.

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

Aside from that, if someone walking into the hospital with a child who is sick or a mother about to deliver a baby heard that DEHP is an admitted reproductive toxin and that there is exposure to DEHP through medical devices for which we have economic substitutes, and that there's a bill in Parliament that says we shouldn't do this, that we should use those substitutes where available, I think most Canadians would say to pass the bill.

I'd rather have the choice, when going into a hospital, to not have a reproductive toxin or toxins that are known. This has been presented by some here today as some sort of clash between environmentalists and the industry. I don't think the Canadian Cancer Society regularly calls itself an environmental activist, and yet it is supportive of this bill.

Again I appreciate the commitment and passion you all bring to this in wanting to rely on the science. When I look to rely on health concerns, I look to people like the Canadian Cancer Society, which has a deep and vested interest in this issue and no particular ax to grind.

When I look at the ability and availability of the 14 pages of substitutes—just to correct my colleague, Mr. Allen, it wasn't just 14 substitutes, but 14 pages of substitutes—available, clearly with a bill that allows a three-year extension window, and then another one that cabinet can allow if there's an economic hardship realized where there's no substitute available, one starts to wonder what the resistance is. Is this some sort of symbolic resistance to make sure that this doesn't become some thin edge of the wedge?

I'll put this to Ms. Axmith. The assessment we have so much faith in from Health Canada on BBP and DBP didn't include children's toys, didn't include breast milk, consumers products, and cosmetics. It would be rather like doing an assessment on smoking but not taking in any sort of respiratory evidence.

How can we look at an assessment that said this is not CEPA-toxic that is only going to study a narrow portion of the application to humans and say that study is a good study?

[Marion Axmith]

But if you look at page four of my presentation, we're saying that BBP and DBP are not used in children's toys.