Nice pics. I've only been there once but I thought it was one of the nicest looking towns in southern ontario- hilly with the Ganny river flowing through. Some attractative and well preserved architecture through the downtown as well. I could certainly envision myself putting down roots there eventually, however I do recall hearing something about nearby land being radioactive...?
Funny you should mention that... take this article with a grain of salt. A sample size of 9 is statistically insignificant.
Port Hope activists call on Health Canada to study alleged uranium contamination
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
November 14, 2007 at 3:31 AM EST
Health Canada needs to fund a thorough study of residents of Port Hope, Ont., to investigate whether exposure to uranium is causing illnesses, says a local community group that conducted its own testing and detected what it says are elevated levels of the dangerous element in a number of residents.
Faye More, chair of the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee, told a news conference yesterday that the costs of a study should be covered by the federal department, but the design should be under the control of local residents.
The group released the results of tests yesterday of nine people who had either worked in Port Hope's nuclear-processing businesses or lived near the plants, and who were checked for the amount of uranium in their bodies. Although it was a relatively small number of people, the testing found that five of them had uranium levels substantially above two test subjects who didn't have Port Hope exposures. One child had readings three times higher than the average of the two so-called controls, while one of the adults had levels eight times the controls, according to the group.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal atomic watchdog, declined to comment on the findings. "CNSC staff is in the process of reviewing the study and is not in a position to comment at the present time," said Aurèle Gervais, a spokesman for the agency.
Health Canada issued a statement yesterday saying Health Minister Tony Clement has directed staff to look at the findings. "If action is required, we will act," the statement said.
The local group did the tests at its own expense because it distrusts previous studies by Health Canada that concluded residents of Port Hope have cancer-incidence rates similar to the provincial average.
Testing done on small numbers of people is open to criticism that the results may be due to chance. But the group said it only had enough money - $11,000 - to pay for 11 urine samples to be analyzed at a state-of-the art laboratory at a German university.
Some residents fear they are being chronically exposed to dangerous levels of uranium from the community's nuclear-processing facilities and from the legacy of past dumping of large quantities of radioactive soil in the area.
Cameco, the world's largest uranium producer, operates plants in Port Hope that process the metal into forms that can be used in atomic power plants, but it says all of its emissions are well below Canadian regulatory standards. Company spokesman Lyle Krahn said Cameco wants to review the test results found by the group. "We take the health and safety of our employees seriously," he said.
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And a counterpoint from a local resident:
Tested, in Port Hope
LES ROBLING
November 14, 2007
Port Hope, Ont. -- The headline Town's Residents Test Positive For Uranium Contamination (Nov. 13) is, at best, misleading. The local study involved testing only nine people. The headline implies that the residents (not a tiny few) have tested positive for uranium contamination.
As a resident of Port Hope, I want to find out the truth - but not this way. There needs to be a much larger test group, and the group sampling and testing, and the medical analysis, needs to be done by two independent organizations.
Only then can there be confidence in the results; only then will Port Hope residents be able to determine whether Health Canada - which has issued studies that have found cancer incidences around the municipality to be similar to the general provincial population - has sold them a bill of goods.
The Cameco plant is right on the waterfront near downtown. It's in the background in this picture.