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“There isn’t strong evidence for an association between any of these cancers and environmental exposure,” Dr. Talbot told reporters after releasing the report in Edmonton.

“The perception is that there is more cancer, and to some extent the perception is correct, but it’s not unique to this community,” he said.

So much for the environmental movement’s latest trash talk about the oil sands as a human health hazard, which expanded on a campaign against the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline that has accused it of threatening the climate, promoting oil exports to China and being reviewed by biased regulators.

The pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf, proposed by TransCanada Corp., is now in the final stage of a U.S. State Department review and President Barack Obama has suggested a decision will come this spring.

Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the U.S. Senate’s environment committee, fronted the health-scare angle when she said at a news conference in Washington on Feb. 26: “I have shown you, or at least I have told you, how health miseries follow the tar sands,” she said, arguing that more cancer is not in the U.S. national interest. “Health miseries follow tar sands from extraction, to transport, to refining, to waste disposal.”

Claims that oil sands development is responsible for the spread of cancer among aboriginals have been circulating since 2006 when John O’Connor, an Alberta doctor, expressed concerns about what he considered to be elevated cancer rates around Fort Chipewyan, a community of 1,200 located 220 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.