4°~ Sunday, December 14, 1986°- North Shore News v Bob Hunter @ strictly personal ® he THE FIRST column I ever wrote about the environmen- tal crisis was in 1968, which is getting awfully close to 20 years ago. Back then, the word ecology was so little-known that West f Vancouver’s Ben Metcalfe rented a billboard and put up a message that said: ECOLOGY: LOOK IT UP. There have been, since then, a lot of bridges under the water. 1 was pleased, but not surpris- ed, to see the results of a recent poll which shows that 69 per cent of Canadians are willing to back moves to protect the environment even if those measures cause a loss of jobs. Ontario is in the throws of passing the toughest anti-pollu- tion laws in the country. To be sure, there is still a mi- nority of klutzes who would con- tinue to say, as Phil Gaglardi once did, that pollution is the smell of money. In any event, I don’t write that often about the state of the en- vironment these days because I take it for granted that most of us already know all about the situation. Why preach to the , converted? Yet, looking over my shoulder, ¥ 1 get the uneasy feeling that the worst is yet to come. [ don’t want to down you or anything so gauche, but the sky is still falling, I’m afraid. | The fact is that about 14,000 Canadian lakes’ are already bio- logically dead and another 40,000 in immediate danger, thanks to acid rain. Canada iaas begun te imple- f ment an acid .iin control pro- gram, but it only aims to reduce smoke stack and exhaust pipe emissions by half in the next de- cade, which will slow the rate of destruction but not hait it. We have to wait for the Americans to get their en- vironmental act together. How jong that will take is anybody's guess, since one of the most ex- pensive lobbying campaigns ever undertaken has been launched by the electrical power industry in the U.S. to defeat any legislation to end pollution. L also note, again with that bad feeling in my gut, that the air over the North Pole is now filthier than the air around Pitt- sburg on some days because the wind currents are blowing in- dustriaj pollutants from Europe, Russia and North America up to the arctic. At the other end of the world, the truly terrifying phenomenon of a massive hole having opened in the ozone layer is being studied — but no one has come close to even working out a theory about how to deal with it. Like a vast camera lens, this ozone hole opens in mid-winter and now stays open for two months before closing again. A few years ago, it didn’t exist at all, and it is growing at a terrific rate. Last year, at its maximum, the hole was nearly as big as Canada. Without the ozone to protect us, sooner or later all life on earth would die out. Even a miniscule decrease in the amount of ozone in the atmosphere would result in millions of deaths from skin cancer, Conversely, too much ozone is bad for us, too. It has been estimated that ozone pollution, mostly caused by automobile emissions, cost farmers in the Fraser Valley no less than $8 mil- SESSIONS ons fo 29 | DESERT 24 hg SUN lion this year in damaged crops. Closer yet to home, you may recall that local beaches were closed again for part of this summer because the coliform count got too high. What was the last year you can remember when the beaches weren't shut down at all? That is, when the water was actually clean, In the last couple of months we have witnessed an appalling str- ing of chemical spills in the Rhine River which has literally poisoned Europe’s biggest waterway to death. Apart from catastrophes like this, the fact also remains that ongoing “‘routine’’ pollution is allowed to go unchecked, or, at best, is only half-heartedly tackl- ed. A case in point is the damage 7 caused by lead in gasoline. Canada allows 30 times as much lead in gasoline as the United States. As a result, something in the order of 12,000 tons of lead leaks into the atmosphere each year. Toronto’s Pollution Probe § organization warns that as many as half of Canada’s preschool children run the risk of lead af- fecting their normal intellectual development. Among us older folks, lead poisoning causes hypertension and high blood pressure. This is heavy-duty stuff. Yet all Canada plans to do is reduce the lead content level in gasoline to what works out to be 11 times as high as the U.S. level. And in the meantime, more peo- ple are buying lead-acid batteries than ever, which inevitably in- crease the pollution level. I wish I could report otherwise, but the fact is, folks, we are still sliding toward ecological hell. o> Care facility Wins award NORTH VANCOUVER'S Cedar- view Lodge has received a two-year accreditation award from the Ca- nadian Council on Hospital Ac- creditation. The ¢50-resident intermediate care facility received the prestigious award in recognition of its high operational standards. Conducted in September 1986, the survey took two days to com- plete. Determination of standards is based on audits of performance. Surveyors for the council evaluated Cedarview’s effec- tiveness and its quality of perfor- mance in everything from clinical records, safety practices, residents’ recreation programs, volunteer ac- tivities and dietary services. Cedarview’s director of resident care Diane Scott said the award ‘‘is a wonderful tribute to our dedicated staff. 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