RADILIH KOE'/FORT GOOD HOPE
The Mackenzie River is not to blame for cancer rates in Fort Good Hope, says the territory’s top doctor.
Stefan Goodman, Watershed Science Consultant, labels water samples taken from the Sahtu region of the Mackenzie River last summer. - photo courtesy of Ryan Gregory
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Dr. Andre Corriveau, the territory's chief public health officer, also said cancer rates in the community are not higher than the rest of the NWT.
“If you put it as a rate in Fort Good Hope, certainly we couldn’t show any significant difference from the NWT as a whole or Canada as a whole,” he said. “When we reviewed the data from the cancer registry, certainly there was no indication that Fort Good Hope had higher that average cancer rates.”
Last June, Corriveau participated in cancer information sharing sessions in Fort Good Hope to address community concerns about cancer rates.
In a report published after the sessions, it stated some residents said they were worried contaminants in the Mackenzie River and in traditional foods were responsible.
“Some expressed concerns that cancer is caused primarily by environmental changes and the effects of contamination like mining, on the water, wildlife and fish that the people consume,” the report stated.
There are usually one or two incidents of cancer in Fort Good Hope each year, but that number increased to three and four incidents between 2002 and 2004, the report stated.
The number decreased again after that time until 2010, when three cancers were diagnosed. Two were diagnosed in 2011.
Corriveau said the most prevalent cancers in Fort Good Hope were breast cancer, colorectal and lung cancer, which is also in line with the rest of the territory.
“Over 50 per cent of cancers diagnosed in the NWT are one of the 'top four,' which are colorectal, breast, lung and prostate,” the report stated. “Almost three quarters of the cancers in Fort Good Hope are among the ‘top four’ in the NWT.”
Corriveau said smoking and diet are two of the biggest contributors to cancer rates.
“The exposures that people have in their own homes to tobacco smoke and eating the wrong kinds of foods can have a much bigger impact on our cancer rates right now than anything we can find in the environment,” he said.
Smoking doesn’t just cause lung cancer, Corriveau added. It also contributes to a variety of other cancers, such as throat, stomach, bladder and breast cancer.
Alcohol is another major contributor, especially in breast cancer, Corriveau also said.
“People binge drink here in the North,” he said. “Breast cancer is strongly linked to alcohol consumption in women. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who drink.”
Corriveau said in smaller communities where everyone knows each other and many are related, incidents of cancer can seem magnified.
“You’re more likely to know those people. They’re your neighbours and relatives,” he said. “It’s a very visible event and so I think it’s a heightened perception.”
Melinda Laboucan lives in Fort Good Hope and said she knows people in her community are often scared when they hear of cancer.
“I really believe a lot of people are in fear,” she said. “When people are in fear, they become paralyzed and they don’t know what to do so they look to the medical field to help them.”
Last year, Laboucan did a project on healing for the Indigenous Women in Community Leadership certificate program through the Coady International Institute, a branch of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.
She said she focused on cancer – a topic that hit home for her. Laboucan’s mother passed away from cancer in September 2011.
“I wanted to do something in memory of my mom,” she said. “I wanted to interview cancer survivors.”
While her interviews took place in Alberta, Laboucan said she has brought the information back with her to Fort Good Hope.
She said she learned a lot about how lifestyle and trauma can impact health.
“A lot of people are blaming the water,” she said. “But they also need to look at the stores, what is on our shelves.”
Laboucan said by the time fruit and vegetables arrive in the community, they are often of poor quality.
As a result, people eat canned and other processed foods, which can be high in sodium, Laboucan said.
Drinking alcohol is another contributor, she added.
“They can’t just blame the water,” she said. “People have to start taking ownership for their lives.”
The elders she interviewed also said emotional and mental health are just as important as physical health when it comes to preventing and surviving diseases such as cancer.
Laboucan said she wants to take the information she gathered and turn it into a documentary, which she would like to distribute to the public and on cancer websites.
“I would really like to put my research together with all my interviews and just get their message out there, it’s not my message, it’s theirs,” she said.
Mackenzie River tested
Dr. Erin Kelly, manager of watershed programs and partnerships with the department of Environment and Natural Resources, was also present at the sessions in Fort Good Hope last June.
She said tests performed last summer show hydrocarbon levels in the river are low.
“They were very low throughout the area, well below the levels that would affect fish or wildlife,” Kelly said.
Kelly said testing performed between Norman Wells and Fort Good Hope revealed some metal concentrations exceeded Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines for Protection of Aquatic Life during higher flows, which usually occur after heavy rainfall, particularly in August.
But Kelly said it’s possible metals are naturally occurring in the river and are not necessarily linked to development activities.
She also said because the metals were attached to dirt, they were unlikely to be available to bugs and fish.
“That happens on rivers with high sediment loads, so rivers that have a lot of dirt in them, and that’s like many Northern rivers,” she said. “What happens is the CCME (Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment) guidelines were made for clearer rivers in the south. When metals are bound to dirt, they’re far less likely to get into the fish and the bugs, so it’s the dissolved metals we’re most concerned with and they were generally low.”
Kelly said water in the drinking water reservoir in Fort Good Hope was also tested and deemed safe.
“Water tests that were done on the reservoir showed there were no exceedences of CCME drinking water quality guidelines or the CCME guidelines for the protection of aquatic life.”
Corriveau said he agreed.
“There is certainly no concern with regard to the drinking water,” he said. “The data Erin presented gives us comfort that the Mackenzie River is a good water source for drinking water.”
Community-based monitoring
Kelly said community based monitoring programs are being developed through the territory’s Water Stewardship Strategy.
The strategy is being guided and developed by different agencies, including the territorial Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the federal Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, along with a steering committee representing seven regional aboriginal governments in the territory, Kelly said.
Last summer, residents of Norman Wells and Fort Good Hope sampled water from six sites along the Mackenzie River. Samples were tested for turbidity, nutrients, ions dissolved and particulate elements, metals and dissolved hydrocarbons.
Sondes, devices left in the water that take measurements every two to four hours, were deployed at two of the sites. Sondes monitor a variety of parameters, such as pH levels and temperature.
Kelly said polyethylene membrane devices, which test for dissolved hydrocarbon concentrations, were also left in the river on a monthly basis two times from July to September.
“They’re super sensitive,” she said. “They get down to parts per trillion.”
Kelly said these projects were just a few of the monitoring projects being conducted from Fort Smith to Inuvik.
Kelly said she hopes monitoring will expand to about 20 communities throughout the territory this year.
Large-scale monitoring programs are also happening on the Slave River through the Slave River and Delta Partnership in Trout Lake and Fort Good Hope, she said.
This year, the goal is to develop a community-based accumulative effects monitoring pilot project that could be expanded to other communities in the territory.
Dr. Paul Jones is one of the project’s lead researchers. He said the project has received $250,000 in funding from the Canadian Water Network to establish a community-based monitoring network looking at the Slave River and delta basin.
The project will analyze global climate change, the effects of upstream dams, ice conditions and the impact of the oil sands in Alberta.
“They will be able to keep track of that information, enter it into our database system,” Jones said. “If observations or measurements show changes over time, then that may be an alert that says, ‘we need to look at that in more detail.’”
The project is scheduled to take place in Fort Smith and Fort Resolution this summer.
