On Thursday, July 19, 2007, I was very fortunate to have the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Mr. Gord Miller, join me on “Strictly Legal” to talk about protecting our environment. Gord Miller has been Environmental Commissioner of Ontario for several years, and his office regularly publishes very thoughtful and very readable reports about threats to our natural environment and about progress that is being made in protecting it. The Environmental Commissioner’s Office was created as a component of the Environmental Bill of Rights of Ontario and I think that Gord Miller and his staff are having quite an impact on the way that environmental policy is developed in Ontario.

His office can be reached at 1075 Bay Street, Suite 605, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2B1. The telephone number is (416) 325-3377 and you can, of course, always visit them at the website www.eco.on.ca.

On July 19th, Gord Miller and I talked about a very serious threat to water quality and to human health. This threat is caused by pharmaceuticals and personal care products. By personal care products, I mean shampoos, toothpastes, insect repellents, deodorants, perfumes and other types of products.

When any of us receives a prescription from the doctor, we are usually more concerned with getting the pharmaceuticals into our system than what happens when they later come out. We tend to forget that drugs that have been consumed by humans are eliminated – in some cases unchanged. These drugs end up in our sewer or septic systems. The sewage that is produced is often processed at a sewage treatment plant and, ultimately, waste water from that plant is discharged into our waterways. To make matters worse, sometimes the drugs end up in the toilet, not because they have been passed through our system but because we did not take the entire prescription, it has expired, and we think we are doing the safe thing by flushing the remaining drugs down the toilet. In fact, nothing could be worse.

Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, antiepileptics, beta-blockers, lipid regulators, vasodilators and sympathomimetics have all found their way into our drinking water. For more information about these drugs and the way in which they flow into our water, see an article by Jackie Campbell, B.Sc. (Pharm.) LL.B. Jackie Campbell is a drug information pharmacist at the Ontario Pharmacists’ Association Drug Information and Research Centre and an associate at Saxe Law Office, an environmental law firm in Toronto. She wrote an article called, “Drugs on Tap: Pharmaceuticals in Our Drinking Water.” It was featured in Pharmacy Practice and can be seen at pharmacygateway.ca.

When Gord Miller and I were talking on “Strictly Legal,” we were trying to focus on ways in which Canadians can make a difference in protecting the environment. Here is one small way - Do not throw unused drugs and other pharmaceuticals into the toilet, thinking it is a safe way of disposing of them. The best way of disposing of these kinds of products is to return them to a pharmacist who has an incinerator or other safe method of disposing of the drugs. It is a small thing, but it is an easy thing to do that makes a difference.

Another issue that Gord Miller and I talked about was the growing challenge of diverting electronic waste from our landfills. As the Environmental Commissioner detailed in his 2003 – 2004 Annual Report entitled, “Choosing Our Legacy,” Canadians throw out tens of thousands of tons of computer waste every year. This includes millions of desktop computers, millions of cell phones, tens of thousands of tons of selected household electrical and electronic products, not to mention millions of television sets and VCRs.

These products are made up of a variety of plastics, cathode ray tubes, mercury, batteries and a long list of other metals and materials, not to mention arsenic.

We probably hope that these electronic products (or what is now becoming known as “e-waste”) are put through a recycling and recovery process so that anything that is reusable can be salvaged and anything that can be recycled is reused. We wish! In fact, a lot of “e-waste” is simply crushed and dumped into landfills. By-products and components of that e-waste leech into our soil and water, threatening the water supplies, harming plants and threatening animal life. Incineration of these products releases dioxins and other by-products into the air to such an extent that that has not proven to be an effective way of managing e-waste.

To make matters even worse, in some cases, companies fill shipping containers with e-waste and send it to developing countries where workers strip the components and reusable parts out under very dangerous circumstances and simply discard the rest. Our throw away luxury items in North America become landfill waste in other parts of the world. In some cases, the plastic components of these computers are simply thrown on open fires, releasing toxic materials into the air.

A small way, but an important way, that Canadians can deal with this is to make sure that their electronic products are not simply thrown out in the garbage to wind their way eventually into a landfill site. There are companies in Ontario and other provinces that can do effective recycling and reuse of electronic components. They also are able to effectively and safely dispose of other parts that cannot be reused. In some cases, a fee must be paid in order to have the waste dealt with properly, but it is a small price to pay for making an important contribution to protecting the environment.

I know from personal experience that in Toronto each year there is a major effort to collect electronic products, batteries and other potentially hazardous materials that are being dumped in our landfill. My wife and I regularly make a trip to High Park in Toronto, where they have trucks and containers lined up to accept a drop off of these kinds of hazardous materials. Hundreds of cars arrive filled with unused paint cans and all sorts of hazardous materials. It is a true community effort. If you do not have such a program in your community, urge your local politicians to get one started.

Whenever Gord Miller is on the program we always have lots of calls, and on July 19th, it was no different, with calls coming in from across Canada. I know that this issue is top of mind for Canadians, and in Ontario, particularly, we have an election coming up in October of 2007. If ever there was a time to put a politician’s feet to the fire over environmental issues, it is now. Make sure that you ask your local provincial candidate what their position is on environmental issues. Some excellent materials for building a fire around a politician’s feet are the Environmental Commissioner’s Reports – which are, of course, all available on one simple CD for ease of reference. Good luck and stay tuned for further discussion of environmental issues when we come back for our third season on September 13, 2007!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 1:53 pm.
It is categorized under Environmental Law.
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