The correspondence section is a public forum and, as such, is not peer-reviewed. EHP is not responsible The author declares that he has no actual or for the accuracy, currency, or reliability of personal opinion expressed herein; it is the sole responsibility of the authors. EHP neither endorses nor disputes their published commentary. potential competing financial interests. Perspectives | Correspondence Oil Sands Contaminants doi:10.1289/ehp.1103746 In the article “Alberta’s Oil Sands: Hard Evidence, Missing Data, New Promises,” Weinhold (2011) misrepresented the find‑ ings of our Royal Society of Canada report (Gosselin et al. 2010) too often to recount fully here. Despite requesting my review of a draft, EHP chose not to correct many errors I identified, raising questions about EHP’s editorial bias on this matter. A few examples must suffice. Apparently determined to find oil sands– related air quality problems beyond the odor issues we highlighted, Weinhold extracted data from our table summarizing 11 years of regional air quality monitoring data (Gosselin et al. 2010) to conclude: PM2.5 exceedances at Fort McKay have been more than double those at the village of Anzac. … As anecdotal evidence of potential particulate matter concerns, a panel commissioned by Environment Canada to evaluate the impacts of oil sands opera‑ tions referred to the “ubiquitous dust” that was present during their site visits. Weinhold failed to explain that the Fort McKay site exceeded the 24 hr objec‑ tive for PM2.5 (30 µg/m3) only nine times in 11 years, compared with Anzac at four times in 11 years. The implication that Fort McKay is suffering from oil sands PM2.5 air pollution is inaccurate. Fort McKay is a rural north‑ ern community surrounded by oil sands sur‑ face mines, with local domestic combustion sources and occasional impact from regional forest fire smoke. Weinhold’s attempt to vali‑ date his oil sands–related PM2.5 pollution case by referring to anecdotal comments about “ubiquitous dust” near Fort McKay reflects his ignorance about what PM2.5 measures, because it does not represent visible “dust.” Apparently searching for other air quality problems, Weinhold paraphrased our report to state: “There are more than 1,400 known pollutants emitted by oil sands operations.” This was based on an inventory of all pos‑ sible pollutants for developing air monitor‑ ing priorities. Weinhold neglected to include our next sentence: “The majority of the total mass emissions (98%) are made up of only fifteen compounds.” But more important, any trace air contaminant expert can verify that thousands of pollutants can be found in any major urban area given sufficiently sensi‑ tive analytical techniques. No jurisdiction has air quality criteria for these countless trace substances. Weinhold’s attempted revelation about oil sands contaminants being ignored lacks any meaningful air quality context. A 330 Weinhold and EHP also chose not to correct his statements, which he directly attributed to our report: Studies have found that many toxics … can occur at higher concentrations downstream of oil sands operations than upstream (in some cases all the way to Lake Athabasca), and some of these are elevated enough to kill fish. We advised EHP that we reported no evidence of higher levels of contaminants persisting to Lake Athabasca, nor did Weinhold’s blanket statement about levels being elevated enough to kill fish accurately reflect our conclusions. Another example of bias in the article appears in the caption of a photograph show‑ ing a Fort Chipewyan woman in a cemetery; the caption mentions our panel finding that evidence did not support a link between cancers in that community and oil sands contaminants, while noting that we recom‑ mended additional monitoring, but there is no mention that our additional monitoring proposal was made specifically to deal with community concerns. The caption continues: “That leaves this Fort Chipewyan woman still uncertain over what caused the lung cancer that killed her mother, husband, and 27y‑ear‑ old nephew between 2006 and 2008.” Using this emotive photo surely stoops below the standards of an unbiased scientific jour‑ nal even if it had acknowledged the over‑ whelming cause of lung cancer. Readers need to know that extensive air quality monitoring in Fort Chipewyan has shown consistently excellent air quality, which has been veri‑ fied by personal exposure studies. Regardless, it is crude sensationalism to imply that the personal tragedy depicted in this photo is relevant to cancer being caused by environ‑ mental contaminants. Clearly, Weinhold is entitled to disagree with our panel’s findings, particularly if he is writing an opinion piece. However, it is totally unacceptable for EHP to allow him to misinterpret extracts from our report and represent them in his article as if they were our findings. This is particularly egregious when the editors have been informed before publication of these misinterpretations. In closing, I am compelled to forewarn any future national academy panel that may communicate with EHP having any expecta‑ tion of it being an unbiased, objective scien‑ tific journal. EHP has behaved no better than agenda‑driven commercial media that seek to spin their points of view regardless of the science. Steve E. Hrudey Professor Emeritus Analytical & Environmental Toxicology Division Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada E‑mail: steve.hrudey@ualberta.ca Ref Rencs Gosselin P, Hrudey SE, Naeth MA, Plourde A, Therrien R, Van Der Kraak G, Xu Z. 2010. Environmental and Health Impacts of Canada’s Oil Sands Industry. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Royal Society of Canada. Available: http://www. rsc.ca/documents/RSCreportcompletesecured9Mb_ Mar28_11.pdf [accessed 5 July 2011]. Weinhold B. 2011. Alberta’s oil sands: hard evidence, missing data,newpromises.EnvironHealthPerspect119:A126–A131; doi:10.1289/ehp.119-a126 [Online 1 March 2011]. Oil Sands Contaminants: Editor’s Response doi:10.1289/ehp.1103746R The article by Weinhold (2011) offered an overview of potential environmental and health issues related to oil sands operations and was never intended to be nor presented solely as a recapitulation of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) report (Gosselin et al. 2010). Instead, it presented a discussion of the environmental health information in that report as well as the related significant source documents it reviewed. The information presented by Weinhold (2011) went beyond the conclusions in the RSC report in order to highlight the data used to reach those conclusions. It also pro‑ vided information from a number of other sources, which at times conflicted with the RSC’s conclusions even as it agreed with details in the report. Both the RSC report and other reports document a range of health and environmental concerns in the Alberta oil sands operations area and beyond. Weinhold’s article (2011) reflected that evidence and included numerous qualifying statements stipulating that many unknowns remain. The fledgling evidence, combined with major gaps in existing environ‑ mental health science and the fact that very little of the expected oil sands development has occurred, suggest that significant additional adverse effects cannot be ruled out as develop‑ ment expands. Given these facts, it would have been irresponsible journalism for Weinhold to have given oil sands operations an essentially clean bill of health. T h e p h o t o g r a p h o n p . A 1 3 0 o f Weinhold’s article (2011) speaks to the real‑ ity that many citizens of Fort Chipewyan continue to be concerned about the possible effects of oil sands activity on their health ovlume 119 | number 8 | August 2011 • Environmental Health Perspectives