To justify its intention to increase the concentration standard for nickel in the air, the Quebec government is committing “a fundamental scientific error” by seeming to ignore the conclusions of one of its own studies, denounces a group of doctors.
• Read also: Nickel standard: the Minister of the Environment is “against the grain” of everyone, says Marchand
• Read also: Nickel: the Minister of the Environment persists and signs
This is what the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment (AQME) deplored in a 47-page brief submitted to the Ministry of the Environment as part of public consultations on the controversial draft regulation.
In the technical sheets on which the Legault government relies to quintuple the current standard, we can read “that no data on speciation [la recherche de la sorte précise] of nickel in ambient air in Quebec or in emissions from sources is not available”.
However, the AQME recently discovered that a scientific study on this subject does indeed exist even if it has curiously gone unnoticed until now. Published in 2013, it is called Origin of high nickel concentrations in ambient air in Limoilou and it is on the website of the Ministry of the Environment.
According to Johanne Elsener, veterinarian and AQME spokesperson, “the study [de 2013] demonstrates that the air of Quebec City contains a composition of nickel totally different from the air of Europe and Ontario”. However, “the scientific error” comes from the fact that “the proposed new standard is based on the nickel composition of European and Ontario air,” she says.
Mme Elsener is also concerned that the nickel present in the air of Quebec is essentially pentlandite, “a sulphide of nickel and iron that may be associated with an increase in lung cancers in the scientific literature”, is alarmed. ‘Association.
Invited to react, Émilie Toussaint, press secretary to the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, maintained “that we will not comment one by one on all the recommendations received”.
Some 27 briefs were produced as part of the consultations on the draft regulatory amendment. The new text would increase from 14 to 70 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3) the permitted daily concentration of nickel in the air. An average annual standard of 20 ng/m3 would be established.
No sanctions since 2013
On the other hand, and after numerous exchanges with the Ministry of the Environment, The newspaper obtained confirmation that no administrative or penal sanctions and no notices of non-compliance have been issued since December 2013 under the current nickel regulations. However, 88 overruns have been recorded in recent years at the Vieux-Limoilou station.
How to explain it? “The measurements taken in the ambient air are influenced by a set of factors which may be the source of the emission of particulate matter which may contain nickel”, replied the government.
Reference-www.journaldequebec.com