Our indefatigable Board Member, Aliss Terpstra, has been attending Toronto community-based meetings for the past year:

Ashbridges Bay Neighbourhood Liaison Committee (NLC) which makes recommendations to city council on matters related to wastewater and sewage treatment; and Citizens for a Safe Environment (CSE) which promotes green initiatives for energy, clean air, clean water and solid waste reduction and management without incineration.

Aliss has made several presentations on the environmental and health impacts of water fluoridation and radionuclides such as tritium from Pickering nuclear station. City Council endorsed a joint proposal from many groups including CSE and IICPH to request a more protective standard for tritium in drinking water, and voted to consider a moratorium on water fluoridation in order to assess heavy metals in biosolids and ammonia in effluent without the chemical interaction of silicofluorides. Ashbridges Bay stopped incineration of garbage, coal for electricity, and finally sewage biosolids in 2003 largely in response to the observed population health effects of heavy metal pollution from incineration and other industry that were demonstrated in children’s elevated blood lead by IICPH’s health survey in 1993 conducted by Dr. Rosalie Bertell.

CSE and IICPH were represented by Karen Buck and Aliss at the 2nd Citizen’s Fluoride Conference at St. Lawrence U at the end of July.

CSE and IICPH have had joint poster presentations highlighting environmental effects of various municipal policies at the Toronto Cancer Prevention Coalition conference, the UN Environment Week display at City Hall, and most recently, the South Riverdale Community Health Center open house. As a result of all our joint efforts to raise consciousness on nuclear power emissions, the “Green TO Pledge” recently signed Oct. 14 by mayor David Miller and most of the incumbents and candidates for municipal election, contains a commitment to push for more stringent tritium standards.

Currently, the City Council’s Board of Health has undertaken to issue a report in January 2007 on the request for a moratorium on fluoridation. This is a huge step forward considering that Hazel Stewart, the health official in charge of fluoridation, had issued a statement two years ago saying that fluoridation would not be opened as an issue for debate.

www.add.org/articles/causeadd.html
www.emedicinehealth.com/autism/page2_em.htm
www.helpguide.org/mental/learning_disabilities.htm
Pollution Poisons Children:“www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,20729512-5006007,00.html”:www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,20729512-5006007,00.html