The provincial government will fund a study into the health effects of air pollution on residents of Sarnia’s Chemical Valley following a joint investigation by journalists, including the Toronto Star, Environment Minister Chris Ballard announced Monday.

Residents of Sarnia and the nearby Aamjiwnaang First Nation have for nearly a decade been asking the provincial and federal governments to fund such a study.

Ballard did not say how long the study would take or what the process would be, saying he didn’t have a finalized proposal.

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“We’ll be announcing stricter regulations in the coming weeks,” Ballard said at Queen’s Park Monday. “We are committed to funding that science-based approach to understanding the localized impact of air pollution on the health of Sarnia residents.”

Monday’s announcement comes after a joint investigation by the Star, Global News, National Observer, the Michener Awards Foundation and journalism schools at Ryerson and Concordia universities revealed a troubling pattern of secrecy and potentially-toxic leaks in the area known as Chemical Valley. There are 57 industrial polluters registered with the Canadian and U.S. governments within 25 kilometres of Sarnia.

The investigation also raised questions about whether companies and the provincial government are properly warning residents of Sarnia and the Aamjiwnaang when potentially toxic substances — including benzene, known to cause cancer at high levels of long-term exposure — are leaked.

More than 500 Ministry of the Environment incident reports, obtained by the investigation through freedom of information requests, details industrial leaks in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley that released a range of emissions — from a 2014 benzene spill that experts said should have triggered alarms to a valve left open for three months venting hydrocarbons that year, to a two-hour leak of hydrogen sulphide from tanks in 2015.

Only one public warning has been issued for an industrial incident through the city’s official alert system since it began in 2014. And the ministry has laid charges in four cases in the Sarnia area since January 2013.

Though benzene levels in Sarnia have dropped significantly in the last 25 years, documents obtained by the investigation revealed how refineries in the area release three to 10 times the annual limit of the carcinogen, exceeding stricter targets put in place in 2016.

Ballard, who recently replaced now-former MPP Glen Murray as environment minister, didn’t say how much the study would cost.

“I don’t think, frankly, it matters where the money comes from,” Ballard told reporters. “Let’s just get this study done.”

The Lambton Community Health Study, which includes the county’s medical officer of health, has sought money for a health study since 2007.

A survey released by the group — based on a phone poll of 500 residents, an online survey and five open houses in 2010 and 2011 — found 80 per cent felt pollution from local industries was causing health problems for them or their families, most commonly citing cancer or respiratory health. Concern was especially high in Aamjiwnaang, where residents live in the shadows of industrial smokestacks that surround them on three sides.

The public health data that exists is inconclusive. Hospitalization rates for respiratory problems are higher in Sarnia and Aamjiwnaang than nearby Windsor and London. There are more lung cancer cases and mesothelioma than the Ontario average, in part because of the region’s asbestos legacy.

But leukemia and blood cancer rates are consistent with the rest of Ontario. Critics say the data, collected at the county level, misses the impact on people in the immediate vicinity of Chemical Valley.

Industry offered to fund about a third of the costs of a health study in 2014. However, Health Canada, then under former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government, said it could provide in-kind scientific support but not enough money for the study. The provincial government never responded to the committee’s requests.

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“I felt crushed and totally defeated, especially when we were so close to the actual study itself,” said Anne Marie Gillis, a Sarnia city councillor and chair of the committee, speaking Monday before Ballard’s announcement.

“We needed the answers and we still need the answers.”

The committee ended its operations in 2016, though Gillis said it’s prepared to regroup.

On Monday, federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said she’s asked her department to look into the 2014 decision.

Michel Camus, a Health Canada senior epidemiologist who was the liaison for the Lambton Public Health Study group and has since retired, said he thought the ministry had “no interest” in intervening.

“They didn’t want to create a precedent by financing one community to address an environmental health issue while other communities might have also similar issues and they then might want to have some monies,” Camus said.

Sarnia MPP Bob Bailey — who worked in the area’s petrochemical industry for 30 years before entering politics — joined calls for the health study in 2008 and 2010.

“If the government of the day and the minister had funded that inquiry (in 2010), we’d have resolved it,” he said. Bailey previously said he thinks a study would prove the current monitoring system is working in Sarnia.

However, Camus said a study might not even bring the answers Chemical Valley residents have long asked for. If it doesn’t examine longer-term trends — after all, some who’ve been exposed to pollutants have moved away, while newer arrivals haven’t been exposed yet — it might not capture an accurate picture.

“We’ll have a better idea of the potential reality of these health effects,” he said. “That might not be enough.”

With files from Carolyn Jarvis, Global News and Robert Cribb

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