Quebec doctors’ letter forces government rethink on polluted cancer black spot

An open letter from 50 local physicians has brought promises of government action in an industrial Quebec town where cancer levels and life expectancy have long been the worst in the province, and where a foundry is permitted to emit 33 times the normal provincial limit of arsenic.The town of Rouyn-Noranda grew up around the Fonderie Horne, named after the prospector who found copper there in 1917. The foundry makes copper anodes, using both metal from the mine and from old electronics heated to very high temperatures. It is the biggest emitter of toxic metals in Canada.For decades the provincial government has been aware of an unusually high burden of lung cancer in Rouyn-Noranda, which also has Quebec’s lowest life expectancy and highest proportion of underweight births.Although other regions have higher smoking rates, Rouyn-Noranda saw 140.3 cases of lung cancer per 100 000 population from 2013 to 2017, compared with…
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