Evidence of meeting #53 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
And it doesn't appear in breast milk or in consumer products, dust, or cosmetics?
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
No, but allow me that question. It appears in these other products; that's guaranteed. Health Canada didn't test for that. You're relying on that report to say exposure is not a risk, when there are products they simply didn't assess. Nor did they assess the cumulative effect on children.
Director General, Vinyl Council of Canada
Well, you need to speak to Health Canada about that, and about their testing.
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
But you're relying on the study. Why would you rely on a study that doesn't actually assess all the products that actually have these chemicals in them?
Director General, Vinyl Council of Canada
Because we operate here in Canada within a regulatory framework, and that framework is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Director General, Vinyl Council of Canada
Even when flawed.
Perhaps your focus should be on improving that process if you're not happy with it.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The committee just did. We just finished engaging in that very process, and thank you for your testimony.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Thank you, Mr. Cullen.
Mr. McGuinty, I believe you have a brief question.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
I have a very quick question. I'd like, if I could, to ask the scientists on the panel a very simple question.
I spent years working on environmental issues, and people used to talk about cumulative assessment, cumulative effects assessment in an environmental context. It's a fledgling area, I think we would agree.
But when it comes to the important questions Mr. Cullen is asking here, when we talk about the need for a cumulative effects assessment on a human body or a child's body or an older person's body, do we know how to do that? Is there established scientific protocol that allows us? Or are we now at a phase where we're pushing out the envelope and we need to begin to understand better how to do that? Do we know how to do a cumulative effects assessment of the important issues that Mr. Cullen is raising here? Do we actually know how to do that? Is there a science-based department, ministry, organization that does cumulative effects assessment for these kinds of products?
Vice-President, Technology Resources, Baxter Healthcare Corporation
I can speak to medical devices, medical products, and yes, toxicology studies that support approval of these products, if it is a product that's used in chronic exposures and in therapies that have chronic exposures. The types of studies that are done are chronic studies, long-term studies that account for cumulative exposures to whatever you're studying. DEHP or some other plasticizer—
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about cumulative exposure, not chronological, not sun exposure over time, which increases your incidence or risk of skin cancer. We're talking about, I think, a multiplicity of exposures, of sources, other than these three particular products that we're examining in this private member's bill. Does the science exist now? Is there a protocol? Is there a practice? Is this happening in industry? Is it happening in government? Is it happening in a regulatory setting?
I'm drawing a distinction here between chronological exposure to one substance and a multiplicity of exposures at one time.
Manager, Phthalate Esters Panel, American Chemistry Council
I think if you're talking about phthalates, we know, at least in the U.S. from the CDC data—and I'll get to the other thing that I think you're talking about—that for the array of phthalates from the CDC data, the exposures are very low. So if you layer these on top of each other, of phthalates, you're still cumulatively below EPA-set safety levels.
Now, if you're talking about an array of all of the chemicals you're exposed to in your daily life through food, the array of chemicals that you may be exposed to for your contact with daily life, is there some way to do that? I think that may be where you're going. Can you look at every pesticide out there, plus every additive in every other product, and come to some conclusion?
There's work going on in academia in things like gene array studies. But we're not there.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
So let me then put the question this way.
When someone comes to see me and says that the science performed by Health Canada is faulty because it has not included this ascribed notion of the “cumulative”, what do they mean by that? What does an ENGO coming to me and saying that the science is inconclusive: “These assessments, however, failed to include exposure from consumer products...no cumulative assessments of these phthalates was done...”, what are they talking about?
Manager, Phthalate Esters Panel, American Chemistry Council
If we're talking about just phthalates, by the virtue that we have excretion data through the CDC, we know what the exposure to a fairly wide array of phthalates is. And that exposure, if you took it and you added it all up, you would still be below what's considered a safe daily dose. So I have confidence.
Plus, the CDC is saying that exposure doesn't equate a disease state or harm.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Thank you.
Are there any comments?
I'd like to thank our guests for being here.
I'd just remind members that if you have any amendments to Bill C-307, we need those as quickly as possible, because we will be looking at this bill on Tuesday.
Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.