Sludge Watch ==> New Brunswick gov't urged to add enviromental risks to wellness program

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Wellness programs should include the avoidance of toxics.  North American 
governments have been hiding urban industrial wastes, especially industrial 
and municipal sludges by allowing them to be hauled out to farm fields.  
Increasingly it is the waste hauler or the municipality who now owns these 
'farms'.  'Farms' that put the neighbour's health, the environment and the 
food we eat at risk.

............................................

New Brunswick government urged to add environmental risks to wellness 
program


FREDERICTON - The New Brunswick government is being urged to add 
environmental health issues to its wellness program.

The New Brunswick Conservation Council estimates that between 300 and 700 
people in the province die every year as a result of exposure to 
environmental hazards such as air pollution and contaminants in food and 
water.

Spokeswoman Inka Milewski said Monday the situation won't improve until the 
government takes such measures as banning cosmetic pesticides and enforcing 
stricter pollution standards.

Milewski said that while chronic diseases have multiple causes, researchers 
are finding that hazards like indoor and outdoor air pollution and exposure 
to pesticides and toxic substances play an increasingly significant role in 
the incidence of disease.

She said evidence is growing of links between environmental hazards and such 
health problems as respiratory failure and certain cancers, including 
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"Increasing discussion in the medical and scientific literature continues to 
highlight emerging evidence of environmental toxicants as a widespread cause 
of illness and suffering," Milewski said in a news release.

"As adverse exposures can be prevented to some degree by innovative 
government policy, we have a unique opportunity to prevent much contemporary 
afflictions in Canada."

The conservation council will make its case later this week to a provincial 
legislature committee on wellness.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jc_EAKmNTcCOQqpe2wjAvBACfO7A