Unravelling the complexity of pollution by the oil sands industry

Abstract

Parajulee and Wania (1) make an important contribution to understanding the origin and magnitude of pollution caused by the massive oil sands industry in northeastern Alberta. Until recently, the oil sands industry and government officials have claimed that all pollutants carried by the lower Athabasca River system were the result of soil erosion, forest fires, and other natural phenomena. This claim was challenged by two earlier papers in PNAS (2, 3), which showed that the oil sands industry contributed substantial amounts of organic and inorganic pollutants to the watershed and river. Although these conclusions were first denied by industry and governments, expert panels appointed by provincial and federal governments supported the results, concluding that industry’s and government’s monitoring programs were incapable of assessing the extent of the pollution problem (4, 5). As a result, monitoring of the river was greatly upgraded by Environment Canada (6).