Letter to the
Minister:
Leona Dombrowsky, June 18th, 2004.
Minister of the Environment,
4 Market Square,
Napanee, Ontario.
K7R 1J3
You were quoted in one of the Bancroft papers when dealing
with the sawdust pile, that your only concern was only
protecting the environment. In Parliament on June 10th
at approximately 11:55 a.m. your associate John Wilkinson and
later on Ms. J. Mossop stated the same
thing , that their concern was protecting the environment. With
what the MOE wish to do with Bill 170/03 negates your comments
entirely. I presume that MOE hasn’t got the foggiest idea what
they are doing. By implementing that bill MOE will be
polluting the aquifer right across the Province.
The City of Toronto did some research on their water quality
which I obtained for $10.00 from City Hall. Lake Ontario from
which Toronto gets its drinking water has 1200 manmade
chemicals. Toronto’s drinking water after the so-called
purification process still has 300 of those chemicals as
reported by TVO’s H2Overview a number of years ago. Even though
Toronto’s drinking water has 300 of these chemicals still in it,
including Mercury, Lead and Arsenic, the report states as
follows: " IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT CHLORINATION IS
PROBABLY THE LARGEST SOURCE OF POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS
CHEMICALS, WE RECOMMEND THAT HEALTH AND WELFARE CANADA BE
REQUESTED TO CONSIDER INITIATING A RESEARCH PROGRAM TO
INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES TO THE USE OF CHLORINE AS A
DRINKING WATER DISINFECTANT".
With that kind of information available to MOE one has to
question the departments integrity when they insist on chlorine
as being one of the treatments to be imposed across the Province
of Ontario. Chlorine will kill E. Coli from our drinking water
but apparently it does not eliminate many other pathogens that
are just as detrimental to our health.
By implementing Bill 170/03 you definitely will not be
protecting the environment but actually polluting it.
The aquifer around the great lakes is polluted beyond man’s
ability to clean it up. While chlorine is not the only
pollutant, it is certainly part of it because one million tons
of chlorine is dumped into Canadian water annually as stated in
Harrowsmith Magazine June/July 1984. Anybody working with the
environment should know that the environment and chlorine don’t
mix. Chlorine acts with everything it comes in contact with and
forms a new family of chemicals called TRIHALOMETHANES. (THM ).
At least 600 chemicals in the trihalomethane family have been
identified and 67 of them are carcinogens. THMs
are not the only pollutant in the aquifer but certainly a big
part of it. I will mention only one of these chemicals which
nearly everybody is aware of and that is CHLOROFORM. I will do
this further down in this article.
The other suggestion which should be used is ultraviolet
lights to control microbes and bacteria. Ultraviolet lights are
not adequate in controlling the pathogens that have to be
eliminated. I dealt with this years ago for the Maple Syrup
Industry and contacted Guelph University and obtained the
following information. The frequency (angstrom) of the
ultraviolet light fluctuates with temperature. Below 65 degrees
there is no germicidal effect from ultraviolet rays. The water
coming out of the ground will definitely be below 65 degrees
most of the time and would therefore negate the lamps ability to
be effective in eliminating desired pathogens.
I will now deal with the health problem that you would impose
on a very large segment of the public if you continue to apply
Bill 170/03 across Ontario.
Because of the chloroform coming out of the ground due to
THMs there is a certain amount of chloroform floating in the
air. If we take a shower from chlorinated water or if the
housewife washes the dishes , the amount of chloroform in the
house will be approximately 5 times greater than outdoors.
Everytime we drink tea or coffee from chlorinated water we are
drinking chloroform plus many other THMs.
Chlorine long believed to be the saviour of drinking water,
has now been shown to cause health problems even greater than
those it was designed to eliminate. Evidence has existed for
some years strongly indicating that chlorinated drinking water
used in most municipalities, causes atherosclerosis (clogging of
the arteries) strokes, birth defects and cancer of the bladder,
stomach, colon and rectum. This was reported by News Research by
newscaster Peter Clark (U.S.A.).
Dr. Michael Alvonya of the National Cancer Institute in
Bethesda, Maryland has pointed to the alarming health risks.
"What you could say without any equivocation is that my studies
demonstrated that people that lived in areas served by
chlorinated water in New York State in seven counties that I
studied, did in fact have twice the risk of contracting cancer."
When comparing industrial toxins versus chlorine, Drs. Price
and Alvonya and confirmed by recent studies at the Environmental
Protection Agencies Health Effect Research Lab in Cincinnati,
Ohio, emphasized that people drinking chlorinated water may be
facing the greatest danger of all.
Joseph M. Price, M.D., attending physician at Saginaw General
Hospital, Michigan, says "In the process of atherogenesis,
chlorine is the essential agent (atherogenesis does not occur to
a clinically significant degree in the absence of chlorine,
regardless of diet and other contributing factors). "Chlorine is
the greatest crippler and killer of modern times" he declares.
"It is an insidious poison." Most medical researchers were led
to believe it was safe, but we’re now learning the hard way that
all the time we thought we were preventing epidemics of one
disease, we were creating another. Two decades after the start
of chlorinating our drinking water in 1904, the present epidemic
of heart trouble and cancer began. Furthermore, Dr. Price
strongly suggests that senility of the aged really is a
combination disease with a single cause – chlorine. The blood
flow to the brain becomes impaired not only by the development
of atherosclerotic plaques in the arteries feeding the brain but
also by a direct impairment of the micro-circulation of the
brain itself – a second and distinct result of chlorine
ingestion.
In his book "Coronaries, Cholesterol. Chlorine". Dr. Price
M.D. gives two example of the effect of chlorinated water. The
first is on chickens housed in the same environment. 95% of the
chlorine fed chickens died of heart conditions and circulatory
diseases, but the chlorine free group remained perfectly
healthy. The second example and the ultimate experiment proved
that ingestion of chlorine in water causes clogging of the
arteries which then can be presumed to cause heart attacks and
strokes later, was done in Vietnam and Korea where the soldiers
were given water that had a far higher content of Chlorine in it
than is usual in civilian life and consequently developed, shown
by autopsy, a far greater degree of clogging of the heart
arteries than has been known in civilian life.
A number of articles state that chlorine accumulates in our
bodies. I have more information from a book published in 2004
that chlorine in our bodies also kill friendly bacteria in our
bowels causing major health problems. The book is by Jordan S.
Rubin, N.M.D., Ph.D.
It is generally believed that the governing bodies concerned
have either ignored or hidden the facts concerning the toxic
effect of chlorine in our drinking water. When governing bodies
show concern and publish information about the dangers in our
water (Toronto) not only should we be thankful but we should
realize the dangers are greater than what we have been led to
believe.
Leona Dombrosky MPP. . If this information is not sufficient
to convince you that Bill 170/03 must be repealed, I have much
more information on this matter. I have researched this for
three years a number of years ago and still have a large
collection of documentation concerning the detrimental effect to
the environment as well as the detrimental effect to the health
of the people in Ontario. If this Bill is not repealed I believe
the people of Ontario have a right to question whether the
people we elect lose the ability to think properly when they go
to Toronto. (Toronto’s drinking water is chlorinated).
To put it in plain English, implementing Bill 170/03 will
cause ground water across the Province to be polluted with many
toxins from the THM family. While MOE have denied this in the
paper recently there is definite scientific evidence that the
constant introduction of chlorinated water into many thousands
of septic systems would destroy the good bacteria in the septic
tank and then this would go directly into the weeping bed and
start polluting the ground with all these THMs. It is almost
impossible to evaluate the damage you would create to the
environment across the province.
Obviously the people who drafted this bill and the government
that passed it didn’t have the foggiest idea what they were
doing. If you implement this bill I honestly believe the present
government would fall in the same category. So please, please,
please repeal this Bill 170/03 if you honestly believe what you
said that you want to protect the environment otherwise you
will be polluting it right across the province.
It is my understanding that your job is to protect the
environment and what goes into it. I do not believe that what I
put into my mouth is any of MOEs business. I believe that it
would be the Health Departments business. In the past the Health
Department have done all the testing of our water and have not
had any problem doing so.
One of many concerned citizens in Ontario. Denis Nolet.
Palmer Rapids,
Ontario