BY BILL BRADLEY
How toxic chemicals in soil and waters are identified in the Sudbury Soil Study is being challenged by an Inco vice-president.
The disagreement happened at the technical committee of the Sudbury Soil Study Thursday morning.
Bruce Conard, vice-president of environment and health science at Inco, expressed concern about the way toxic chemicals are to be analysed in the work undertaken by the SARA Group, responsible for the soil study.
A chemical such as nickel or arsenic can take various forms and some are more toxic to people or wildlife than others, he said.
?Organic arsenic, for example, is relatively harmless, but another form of arsenic, inorganic arsenic, is more harmful because it can be accumulated easier by the body and that is important for assessing the health effects of the arsenic,? said Conard, a chemist by training.
Conard?s objection to the methods being used by the SARA Group to determine the harmful effects of toxic materials like arsenic or nickel is that more methods need to be used to determine exactly how toxic the material really is.
Conard said analysing a chemical is like detective work.
?You have to use different techniques, being aware of their limitations, just like a detective is in solving a crime ? eventually you get a consensus as to what happened.?
He said SARA is using only a couple of methods, possibly because they happen to be the cheapest, and that can lead to problems later on.
He cited the controversy arising during the Port Colbourne study of contaminated soils from Inco?s nickel operations. People did not understand that chemists can?t deliver absolute results from one method of analysis.
Technical committee chair Dick DeStefano noted Conard?s concerns. He is setting up a task force to deal further with Inco?s objections. They would
report back to the study group by early November.
