we have the most expensive health care system in the world and it's probably valued the least. leaders of the biggest specific reason meeting in hawaii pledged to prevent the european debt crisis from spreading to the region among other issues to dominate the gathering are establishing a persistent wide free trade zone and tackling the ongoing syrian and iranian issue . concerns grow with the expanding influence of brussels of each new member states as greece and now italy look to choose prime ministers based on the support of europe but not the people so you have all this guy who is set to step down off of the foreign austerity vote is likely to be replaced by former euro crowd mario monti. israeli forces clashed with palestinian activists protesting the

confiscation of land for jewish settlements across the west by the latest round of debate over palestinian statehood but ends with a deadlock but the un security council. is going to stay with us here and i'll tell you next we report on the claims that a major cancer fighting drug producers are actually responsible for the pollution that causes the disease my mother was diagnosed with cancer at the age of forty nine she did not smoke she ate five fruits and vegetables a day exercised regularly and her parents never had cancer if she was diagnosed with the disease what caused her cancer no one could say i kept wondering why.

every day about three new synthetic chemicals enter the consumer market of the one hundred thousand synthetic chemicals in heavy commercial use only about two percent have talked to the logical profiles and in other words every day without our consent we're exposed to about ninety five thousand untested chemicals.

who exactly are the world's leading chemical producers. now a new product is on grocery store shelves genetically modified foods. who develops most of the world's genetically modified crops. but only and then all of independent studies have been conducted health problems ranging from infertility to proliferate of changes have been detected to these foods cause cancer we have no idea because no long term health of these have been conducted anywhere the rest easy because if someone in your family is diagnosed with cancer a number of treatments are available and you're the companies that provide them. it's. it's. it's it's it's.

it's. just so it's just so. the so.

this is sarnia situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sarnia though we use the fruits of its labor. lastic patio furniture pesticides rechargeable batteries plastic food containers compact disc cases. in jet fuel and gasoline. to make these products over five and a half million kilograms of suspected and known human carcinogens which are so. senses that cause cancer are in that each year. dioxins one of the most toxic

carcinogens known to science is also emitted during these chemical processes. sitting in the middle of these over sixty chemical plants is the first nations reservation. we're going. to. be. health issues we're resume our concerns with respect to. you know all the conditions that we've been. experiencing the they don't want to hear most concerned if they just get my views considered so if we're going to be not actually in that hell hole for every one of our meeting with the government has been the no one had

that they need for the industry workers out there would turn into our industry that they have to need more chemicals tell me that they're really into that n.p.r. i but they only report what is it over ten thousand times the chemicals that are police and the industry has kind of stuck because they don't want to give away the trade secrets in all this and they say they do self-important you're talking about who's going to actually pull the phone you're free now you just let industry policeman follow you and all eagerness that meaning but in your office waiting for them to report you may tell you what is going on should you not that might be a lot going on. we actually sold them the land i don't know what here it was they they did hold a boat out here and ask. people have to sell the land and i don't know how much

land that they ended up selling to them but. i have asked our elders and they said that they were told that there was going to be chemical well what did they tell you about chemicals that their chemical. abode did they didn't really tell them a whole lot more. and then everybody at that time i guess they must have been looking at thinking of dollar signs that they're going to get some money. and much anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes in the town and that as they say it like if there is a mist sometimes there is the midst of the earth and then they have all these little walkways around here they have are coming from sarnia and they want to put it through chemical valves on the way to kill everybody.

every single facility that just any any kind of picture or find and it's nancy i tell you what on benzene in particular there's no law limiting how much facilities can emit i mean the benefit that the industry has down there in having so many different facilities is nobody can point to one facility and say you're caught because of the problem so you're going to have it all the industries down there and you're going to depend on you know this sooner they're meeting morning they should clean up the mess we have all kinds of evidence that our emissions have been reduced substantially one by measuring them. by working collectively as a as a group of companies to keep improving our performance there have been examples over the years in our reports where a companies have. looked at the responsible care ethic and decided well this we can't do it this way the seed are too risky to the community for transporting something that's in a way that's not we can't defend it or

a product looks too risky i'm not sure i can manage it so let's just limit it so there are countless examples i think where people have continually challenge themselves and prove their performance and ended up in their view a better company for. what we're finding out from the bucket sampling because what we do is we'll take a sample. and we ship it off to california and then they tested to see what chemicals are in there and at what level then we give a back to global community monitoring and they love the chemicals and how they can affect your body and what the standards are in the states for these chemicals. that

we turned around and headed to the people here are strong old people justice and that they love probably the standards in canada or terrio or whatever. but there are forty that there is a lot of there is no standards for a lot of these chemicals here so that's what they were they were short as the slides. are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body and as i was looking at i don't know if there's a whole bunch of people on the reserve that out these bonuses. in two thousand and four ada compiled a health survey of the nine hundred residents in the adults she discovered severe chronic headaches chronic respiratory problems severe skin problems near logical problems. infertility and miscarriages birth defects cancers and loss of children. in the children she found severe chronic

headaches chronic respiratory problems neurological problems developmental problems severe skin problems arthritis birth defects kidney and bladder diseases and cancer where do you thoughts on the relationship between health and the petrochemical industry i'm not so sure what the relationship is we do know again we also legacy issues and you know mesothelioma is an issue related to the use of a specialist in industry and you know that's well documented as well understood and we know that there is this legacy of your hope there you know it's unfortunate we have empathy for those individuals who suffer from as i feel you know but we do know there is a legacy issue there with respect to other health issues that you know i think

there's been a lot of inference is made of both the connection between health and potential machines coming from me coming from the petrochemical industry this is one of the reasons why we and many others in the in the community major major major players in the community are advocating for a comprehensive health study a scientifically rigorous rigorous peer reviewed health study. in sorry it's not if you're going to get cancer it's when we found a cat in my mom's field and the cat have since very down at the end of the season and she was drenched with pus decides we brought her home to died so can't stand the thought of her dying and the field. we managed to save her life but she has ongoing neurological problems she has seizures and tremors and if she's around any pesticides now or any type of chemical she has seizures and i started thinking if it's happening to cats what is it doing to us so when i start looking at home plus made it past aside some science behind i don't know much just brain science so

reading the stuff again marry another person could now be very interesting in my life to learn what actually happens to kind of falls on a hard fight so and then with my husband working in chemical i was even more interesting learning the stuff that happened there and then my mom got the first of her three cancers and then she got second and then i got cancer and then she got the third my concern about cancer in this community on a personal level. and you know that's got nothing to do with with with my job here or anything else you know regrettably in our society there's all kinds of potential for different exposures to lifestyle issues and genetics i'll have to before i could you i mean clearly i have had relatives who have terrible diseases what their relationship is i couldn't tell you you know what i mean and again but i don't have a concern living in the city of sarnia related to do the kinds of things you're

talking about you know that the levels of contamination there are among the highest ever recorded for as best as for benzine for the dioxins so why are we doing this and what we're really it's supposed to be illegal to experiment on people without their permission. that's the nuremberg protocol sarnia is violating the nuremberg protocol we passed a number of laws that were basic environmental laws to clean up the air the water soil and provide for protection for consumers and workers the fundamental tenet of those laws was it's better to be safe than sorry the basic precautionary principle was in those laws in the one nine hundred seventy s. but in the one nine hundred eighty s. we moved away from that approach and we took the position in the government that we had to have proof in terms of human harm and dead bodies and we've now got to come back to the precautionary approach in europe they've passed legislation like the rich program to require evaluation of chemical hazards but over the past eight

years the bush administration has hammered away as has the canadian government at the european union saying that's a restraint of trade it's going to interfere with our ability to have commerce so the european principles have become slightly weaker because of that but they're still better than what we have in canada the us today in canada and the us today it is legal for you to use a bubble bath on your baby they contains a known carcinogen something that causes cancer in animals but not in europe it's not legal so why should european babies bottoms be safer than my grandchildren.

milind michigan is home to dow chemicals world headquarters well dupont. they are monsanto and i.c.i. which is today owned by asco nobel are all responsible for releasing dioxins dow chemical is thought to be the world's largest root source of dioxin. it was also thought to be the world's largest producer of chlorine one of the root causes of dioxins and the largest producer of chemical feedstocks to make p.v.c. plastics whose life cycle is associated with more dioxin formation than any other manmade product on earth. because of these modern chemical processes one thousand nine hundred eighty seven dioxins were present in everything from daters to coffee filters to tampons. in two thousand and three dar released an open letter to middling residents dioxins were naturally occurring substance the letter however forgot to clarify a few details. forest fires and volcanoes do produced eriksson's they're not the

same dioxins created during chemical processes many doubts and also a number of the natural variety by a hundred to one. the letter also forgot to mention that the first health assessment of dioxin completed by the american environmental protection agency estimated that more people will get more cancer from dioxins than any other chemical on earth. with all signs up there are the dow property again this all doubt property. dioxin is a molecule it's a byproduct of chemical processing it is a known carcinogen alvord will dispute that tao has been able to manufacture so much uncertainty about this chemical that if you look around the west rest of the world nobody else is debating the toxicity of dioxin except your admission. in fact

toxicologist in the one nine hundred seventy s. said that this is perhaps one of the most toxic materials he's overseeing. why do you think be disputed now. because there's the financial implications are you know there's a pending class action lawsuit against of chemical from residents on the river. and i think the implications for the dow denying the texas see the chemical now has bigger broader implications worldwide i mean there are a lot of dioxin contaminations around the pantry that you know not that not just i was responsible for that could be saddled or you know could have to have ramifications from the settlement or agreement on the toxicity of dioxin or on the subject of a class action lawsuit here i think the ramifications are huge for the chemical industry.

by a very big. we came here it was like an ideal stock and the only thing we didn't realize in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven when we bought it we were three miles downriver from the chemical plant . i had five children in three of them have immune disorders. and my husband when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. my sister in law when i called her to tell her she said oh no i i would expect diabetes or heart disease not cancer we don't have any cancer in my family and he actually got into a pilot's study that the health department in michigan was doing.

and they came out and took his dioxin levels and the thursday before he died and he got in he was really pretty weak but he said that he would do anything if it would help prove that you know there are problems with. the living here and the chemical contamination in the area he had a high level of different dioxin contaminants and as part of. a high for his age level like in the ninety five percent my husband died at seventy his that uncles lived to be in their ninety's and as i said he wasn't sick so you know you say well of the seventy that's a good life but if there were twenty more years. i would have liked to have had

twenty years. of corporate jet for a gal could be interesting and rewarding particularly when it's an angel. corporate angel network users empty seats on company business trips to fight cancer patients which i feel i should treat the patients like christy this company does great things and this is one. of the. dow declined to be interviewed for this film if given the opportunity we would have been curious to know what that little girl their oxygen levels were.

you know we've heard people say i don't see dead bodies floating down the river is that what it takes to get a response from the public health officials from the lock to the missiles i don't know but again cancer is very ubiquitous in our area and we have you know these tremendous cancer rates and it's dioxin responsible for all of it no part of it oh probably but we have p.c. bees we have many many other contaminants out there in our environment that could be responsible for this the dioxin is just a part of it one hundred percent of cancers are genetically determined which means that for does sell to become cancerous we need to have a genetic change and it's general ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of cancers are. completely different story so even so hundred percent of cancer

so jim it's going to be determined only five to ten percent of cancers are there at the time. the importance of so knowing this is that a lot of people say oh my god nobody with cancer in my five years therefore i protect thought because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers occur among people with family history of cancer childhood cancer has increased thirty percent in the past two decades testicular cancer cancer of young men has increased fifty percent in every industrial country now that's not because of aging and we are seeing an increase in cancer in the elderly adjusted for the fact that there are more of that yes we have more cancer because we're living longer and there are more older people but that does not explain all of the increase in cancer that we're seeing today the

romans any foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform full lifespan rodent studies on the carcinogenic potential of chemical substances for the foundation is also unique in that it does cause a logical screening of every organ in every road in tested. long term health studies of this kind which in cost about a million dollars are not required by companies wishing to license a new synthetic chemical drug or genetically modified crops. or two thousand and five study on aspartame the artificial sweetener involved one thousand eight hundred rodents previous experiments on aspartame have had twenty rodents or group or forty rodents per group and so when we came in and did one hundred fifty rodents per sex per group it was very important results as a rule the u.s. in t.p. sacrifices their rodents after two years of life so their

experiments they usually take one hundred in ten weeks that's considered the gold standard. whereas our salman's our lifespan and rather than interrupt the experiment and sacrificing the animals one hundred ten weeks are our rodents live out their natural lifespan about fifty percent of what they have studied has proven to be carcinogenic and about fifty percent of what we have study there is data that shows that we actually only have scientific information hard data on about two percent of all the chemical known chemical substances so it is a huge discrepancy between what we know and what we don't know unfortunately we as citizens tend to confuse the absence of evidence with the absence of risk but if an agent has not been adequately studies adequately and

i would add independently study it does not mean that it is safe. tentative of the industry is all there is to procrastinate zip a golden many of regulation about could could agent chemical compounds you know industry used to be own work and it is understandable but does not understand the boat at these. shanties doesn't do that i work and that is why most of the shanties i've not independent they are sponsored by industry and most of the time they don't create the conflict of interest.