Trevor Hancock: We Need to Investigate Links Between Chemical Industry, Governments

Over 40 years ago, in the early 1980s, I co-led a major report on “Our Chemical Society” for the City of Toronto’s Department of Public Health.

In it, we sought to step back from what we called the “chemical of the day” problem — so many chemicals of concern, so many requests to look at them, one by one — to take a broader and more in-depth look at the systemic challenges of living in a society literally perfused with human-made chemicals.

We also raised concerns about the relationship between government regulators and the chemical industry.

I vividly recall, on more than one occasion, commenting that Health Canada’s Health Protection Branch should be re-named the Industry Protection Branch, because it seemed more focused on protecting the chemical industry than protecting public health.

What brought this decades-old report back to my mind was the recent exposé by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson in Canada’s National Observer of the unethical shenanigans at Health Canada’s Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency.

In a series of articles in recent weeks, and as far back as a year ago, he has documented the agency’s failings, noting: “Since 2020 alone, that agency has been called out for colluding with pesticide companies, attempting to increase pesticide residue limits on food and failing to release data needed to assess pesticide risk.”