Most Americans have never heard of the Alberta tar sands, yet it is one of the largest and most destructive projects on Earth. This little-known industrial mega-project is creating an ongoing environmental disaster in Canada, and is now threatening to create one here in the United States.
Tar sands oil is mined from a black sticky substance called bitumen, found beneath the vast boreal forest in Alberta, Canada. To extract tar sands crude, oil companies clear-cut ancient forest, then strip mine the soil beneath it, using huge quantities of fresh water and natural gas to separate the oil from bitumen. The process leaves behind giant toxic lakes that are linked to abnormally high rates of cancer in neighboring communities and are large enough to be seen from space.
But it doesn’t stop there. The oil industry is expanding facilities to process this toxic oil here in the United States through a network of refineries and pipelines. Public health in several states is under threat from dramatic increases in refining pollution, and massive pipelines are planned to cross the United States’ largest freshwater aquifer, which supplies one-third of our nation’s agriculture. Communities in Alberta have long been speaking out about the damage tar sands poses to their health through water and air pollution. Now, Americans from Minnesota to Houston are worried about Canada’s tar sands expansion poisoning their water, destroying their farmland, and contaminating their air.
Because it requires large amounts of energy, production of synthetic crude oil from tar sands is 82 % more carbon intensive per barrel as compared to that of conventional crude oil. In addition to its high carbon costs, tar sands oil production requires two to five barrels of water for each barrel of bitumen extracted. This water is used to steam the bitumen from the sand and clay. Over 90 % of this water is then so toxic that it is not reclaimable which has led to the creation of over 65 square miles of toxic waste lakes called tailings ponds.
The bitumen is a solid that is full of heavy metals and carcinogens. Because it is a solid, it must be diluted with other carcinogenic chemicals such as natural gas liquid condensate, benzene, toluene, hydrogen sulfide, etc. and then run at extremely high pressure which creates dangerous heat levels, thus allowing it to flow through a pipe to the upgrading facilities.
The mercury, lead, and arsenic in tar sands waste threaten human health, even at small levels of exposure. Already, communities downstream from tar sands mines in Canada report 30 percent more incidents of rare bile duct cancer than those who do not live near the tar sands.
Tar sands oil contains elevated levels of many known carcinogens and toxins. In a recent study, tar sands waste water “tailings” from extracting oil were found to contain ammonia, benzene, cyanide, phenols, toluene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, arsenic, copper, sulphate, and chloride. Many of these chemicals are highly toxic and known to cause cancer, and regularly leach into groundwater from the massive lakes used to store tailings. These chemicals are present in tar sands oil before and after processing, and will end up in American groundwater when pipelines leak. They will also end up leaching in to our environment from the toxic spent catalyst that remains after it has been upgraded at the U.S. refineries.
Processing tar sands oil releases pollutants directly linked to asthma, emphysema, and birth defects into American communities. Because tar sands oil is a heavy, low-quality form of crude, it requires extensive “upgrading” to be transformed into fuel. Refining tar sands crude creates far more air pollution in American communities that are already burdened with cancer and poor air quality as a result of oil industry activities. Tar sands oil contains, among other toxic metals, 11 times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen, and five times more lead than conventional crude oil.
Heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons released in tar sands refining have been linked to pre-natal brain damage. Nitrogen oxides, along with volatile organic compounds released in tar sands refining are the principal cause of smog and ground level ozone. Exposure to nitrogen oxides is a direct cause of asthma, emphysema, and other lung diseases.
With plans to triple refining and transportation of tar sands by 2015, there is no question that air pollution and health problems in communities from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast will increase.
As the investigative journalist, Andrew Nikiforouk, pointed out: “In simple terms, the construction of every new tar sands project contributes to greater economic vulnerability, unreal weather, and chronic water shortages for ordinary citizens. Nikiforuk also pointed out that the Alberta government says it makes sense to describe the resource as oil sands “because oil is what is finally derived from bitumen.” “If that lazy reasoning made sense, Canadians would call every tomato ketchup and every tree lumber. Passing off tar-like bitumen as oil is about as accurate as calling an aspen tree a Douglas fir, or a donkey a horse.”
Read Andrew Nikiforuk’s book; “Tar Sands – Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent”
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http://dirtyoilsands.org/publications
http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html
http://www.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/tar-sands/faces/default.aspx
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“Little is yet known about how the different toxic metals and petrochemicals interact..”
“What are perhaps the biggest structures ever created – the vast tailings ponds – hold back waste water from the extraction process that is deemed too toxic to release back into the river system.” “But this heavy-metal soup of arsenic, mercury and cadmium, mixed with carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic compounds, isn’t fully contained by the sandy bottom of the so-called ‘ponds’.” “but we now know that at least 11 million liters of toxins flow into the Athabasca River every day.” “They noticed people growing sick – much sicker than they had been in the past. Immune diseases. Diabetes. Lupus. And cancer – not just in the old, but also the young. Rare cancers that should not be occurring in such high numbers in so small a community.”
http://www.newint.org/features/2010/04/01/first-nations/
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Hundreds of deformed fish found in rivers running through the Alberta oil sands have been collected and documented by an industry-led monitoring body, The Globe and Mail has learned, but the findings were not shared with the public or key decision makers in government.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-kept-in-dark-on-abnormal-fish-found-in-oil-sands-rivers/article1841714/singlepage/#articlecontent
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A 2006 study by Suncor found elevated arsenic levels in moose 453 times higher
http://www.nodirtyenergy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=113&Itemid=162
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TransCanada’s actions in northern Alberta have directly contributed to Canada’s continued abuse and decimation of the Lubicon tribe. Take a look at the following excerpts and links below for a better understanding of how TransCanada has a history of being a “bad actor.”
“Three separate U.N. bodies (U.N. Human Rights Committee, U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the U.N. Special Rapportuer on Housing) have told TransCanada to cease and desist and respect international covenants [William M. Cox, "Sever All Ties with TransCanada," Juneau Empire, 2010.03.31].”
“If we will pull money from companies contributing indirectly to human rights violations by generating revenue for evil governments in Iran and Sudan, we should act with stronger revulsion to withhold our money from an oil company committing direct human rights violations with its business practices.”
http://blog.keloland.com/issues/?p=1960
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