Most of First Nation Tests Positive for Mercury Poisoning Decades After Toxic Dumping Into River
Demonstrators gather as they prepare to march during a protest in Toronto to highlight demands for the restitution for mercury poisoning which is claimed to be affecting the health of the community in Grassy Narrows, Ontario. Photo by CP/Chris Young
Almost everyone tested on a small First Nation reserve in northern Ontario is experiencing symptoms of mercury poisoning decades after workers at a pulp mill dumped thousands of kilograms of the neurotoxin into its river system.
The new research comes from Japanese experts on mercury poisoning, who visited Grassy Narrows and the neighbouring community of Wabaseemoong in 2014 and found that 77 of 84 people examined showed signs of sensory disturbance. In Grassy Narrows, 95 percent of people displayed tactile symptoms, which include numbness in the fingers and toes, according to the report that was presented to the community over the weekend.
During the study, Japanese doctors set up quiet, private environments in a health centre at Grassy Narrows and a school gym in Wabaseemoong, and band offices notified residents that they could come and be examined for mercury poisoning. Few residents had knowledge of mercury poisoning symptoms, the study noted.
“These numbers indicate that a large portion of the population has health impairments due to the effects of mercury,” the report states.
“It confirms what we’ve always known,” Grassy Narrows chief Simon Fobister told VICE News over the phone Tuesday.
When the Japanese researchers visited his community, they diagnosed the chief with symptoms related to mercury poisoning, namely that he can’t walk in a straight line.
It’s not the first time researchers have probed mercury poisoning on the reserve of about 1,500 people.
According to the Toronto Star, another report released earlier this year found that mercury levels were high enough in the umbilical cord blood of Grassy Narrows babies to affect the brain development of the children.
And a report earlier this year found that the river system is still poisoned, and mercury levels aren’t decreasing, but it could be cleaned up by diluting the sediments at the bottom of the river with clean clay sediments, which would bring mercury levels down. The lead author of the study, John Rudd, told VICE News that method could bring mercury levels down to consumable levels in small fish within five years.
That method would cost $30 to $50 million.
However, despite increasingly loud calls for that to happen—including a hundreds-strong march through downtown Toronto in the spring—the Ontario government has not yet committed to the cleanup, saying more research is needed.
“There are a lot of difficult questions,” premier Kathleen Wynne said in June in response to Rudd’s report. “The scientists have said to us there are questions about how to actually do the cleanup because moving the sediments at the bottom can actually cause further damage. So we have to be very careful.”
The province has committed $300,000 toward testing the river’s sediments.
“I am deadly serious about this,” Wynne said after committing to the study. “I want this to happen, but I am not going to go ahead unless we’re sure that we’re not going to do more damage.”
As a result of a lawsuit by Grassy Narrows in the 1980s, the Ontario and federal governments began compensating the victims of Minamata disease along the river system, if they displayed neurological symptoms of the disease. More than 300 people have been compensated through the scheme since 1986.
In the report, the Japanese researchers identify three factors in Minamata disease (mercury poisoning) in Canada: centuries of discrimination against Canada’s Indigenous people; the forced relocation, land restrictions and residential school experience of the two reserves; and the factory dumping mercury into the river without the reserves knowing.
“We therefore believe that the solution to the problem of Minamata disease in Canada must be based on the resolution of the hardships the Indigenous people have experienced so far,” the report stated.
“Nothing comes easy for us,” Chief Fobister said. “But we’ll keep putting political pressure on the provincial government and Canada to commit to cleaning up the river.”
“It’s still a battle that we have in front of us, so we’ll keep pushing, we’ll keep working at it.”