Gabriola Island Clean Air Society

Many people incorrectly assert that indoor air quality is worse than what can be found outdoors. In some instances this can be true. Burning toast in the kitchen will most likely create short-term high levels of indoor air pollution, and chemical off-gassing from commonly found households products including construction materials can create hazardous environments inside your home. Mould and cigarette smoke can also contribute to this problem. Between June 6-18, 2018, we ran two separate and identical PurpleAir sensors at one of our locations on Gabriola Island. Data was averaged over a 10 minute period and ambient (outdoor) air quality was quite good this time of year with only a few instances of residential wood burning in the immediate neighbourhood. Below are the results. Each PurpleAir sensor has two built-in laser detectors, so we took the average of them to create a standardized data set. From this graph you'll note the following. 1. Outdoor air pollution is almost...

In the late 1970s, blood operators from around the world began to panic as vulnerabilities in their risk management systems were exposed due to the global spread of new and difficult to detect pathogens. As a result of these failures, thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from blood and blood products. In Canada, the Canadian Red Cross Society ran the blood system until it was dismantled following recommendations from the Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada which was led by Justice Horace Krever. Two new non-profits emerged to take over Canada's blood system after this 1997 report was released, and the groundwork for Canadian Blood Services and Hema Quebec were laid out by these recommendations, new insurance and reinsurance arrangements, and a new corporate governance structure with newly defined roles for the federal Minister of Health and Provincial and Territorial counterparts. The Canadian Red Cross Society made several key ...

For years the province's preeminent charitable organization for all things respiratory, the BC Lung Association, has been receiving money from the provincial government to administer a flawed program to exchange wood stoves. As we've stated elsewhere on this blog, EPA wood stoves are not the answer and emit massive amounts of particulate and other kinds of pollution that contradict the efforts of BC Lung and others to protect public health. By putting their name and team behind the wood stove exchange program, BC Lung is jeopardizing the health of thousands of people. We strongly recommend that they discontinue their support of this program and speak out against all kinds of wood burning practices. One can hardly support lung health research while at the same time willingly and obstinately ignoring a major exposure pathway to lung and heart disease. An earlier call for action provides more details. See here . According to a Senior Air Quality Scientist with the BC Min...