'Smoking Gun': Tar Sands Report Eviscerates Industry Claims [View all]

[Fire Walk With Me]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/08-1

As climate justice campaigners in the US ramp up their efforts to block the Keystone XL pipeline and First Nation activists foment a global 'Earth-centered' movement in Canada, scientists say a new study "conclusively" proves that tar sands oil is both highly carcinogenic and that toxic contamination in Alberta, Canada covers a much wider area than previously acknowledged.

Researchers involved in the independent but government-funded study say the report eviscerates claims by the industry that heightened levels of toxins found in Alberta could be "naturally occurring."

&quot That debate's) completely over," John P. Smol, a Queen's University professor and the study's lead author, told The Canadian Press. "If there was still a coffin to be nailed, I think this is kind of putting a lot of nails in the coffin."

The research, published Monday in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that since tar sands production began in earnest in 1978, deposits of PAHs—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogens that rank among the top 10 hazardous substances on the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry— have increased 2.5 to 23 times—to the point that some lakes are as contaminated as urban lakes.

(More at the link.)