Toxic Labels Initiative

Ontario NDP wants product labels to warn people about toxic chemicals

Canadian Press: KEITH LESLIE

TORONTO (CP) - Armed with tests that suggest the body of every Canadian carries trace evidence of dangerous chemicals, Ontario's New Democrats are spearheading an effort that would help them learn exactly what carcinogens or toxins they are exposed to on a daily basis.

Toxic chemicals are in many everyday products, from household cleaners and laundry detergents to hair dyes and cosmetics, said NDP environment critic Peter Tabuns, who is pushing for a new law that would compel manufacturers to disclose dangerous ingredients in their products.

Consumers would demand changes if labels told them exactly what a product contains, Tabuns said in an interview.

"Right now, most people don't know whether or not products that they buy have cancer-causing agents in them."

Tabuns hopes to convince Ontario to follow the example of California, where community right-to-know legislation has helped get arsenic out of bottled water and lead removed from some candies. Manufacturers there opted to find alternatives rather than list carcinogens on their labels, he said.

"They are not going to want to have that label on their products," Tabuns said. "They know that consumers, especially parents, don't want to subject themselves to exposure."

He cited the example of Gillette, which reformulated Liquid Paper correction fluid to eliminate trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, rather than comply with California's 15-year-old law to label the product with a warning that the ingredient could cause cancer.

The members of Canada's Chemical Producers Association believe in right-to-know legislation, but "the devil is in the details," said Michael Bourque, the association's vice-president of public affairs.

He cautioned against labelling products that contain only a few parts per billion of a certain chemical - levels that scientists say are safe.

"One problem (is) where you provide a fire hose of information that no one can drink from it, or you provide lists of things that are in such minute quantities that we don't know whether there's an impact," Bourque said.

"Do we support giving people information that's going to confuse them, alarm them unnecessarily? No, we don't."

The lobby group Environmental Defence has issued three reports since 2005 detailing tests on Canadian children, adults and even four federal MPs that found evidence of 68 different chemicals, including pesticides, PCBs, stain repellents, fire retardants, mercury and lead.

Environmental Defence policy director Aaron Freeman said legislation like that proposed by Tabuns is "absolutely essential" in order to help protect consumers.

"You're seeing consumers making environmentally sound choices when they're given information, (such as) the slow-motion explosion toward organic food and non-toxic alternatives in areas like pesticides and cosmetics," he said.

"It's true that some chemicals are only in certain products at very small amounts, but for some chemicals, those small amounts are still very toxic. At a very basic level, if something is toxic, we have a right to know."

Tabuns' private member's bill, dubbed the Community Right to Know act, has received second reading in the Ontario legislature, but there's no indication the Liberal government will agree to hold public hearings on the bill or allow it to come back to the legislature for third and final reading.

Anne O'Hagan, the senior communications adviser to Environment Minister Lauren Broten, said the government supports the general idea behind the bill. "More information can only be a good thing when it comes to the environment."

Tabuns' bill also calls for better worker access to warnings about harmful chemicals they are exposed to on the job, and he plans to introduce companion legislation, a Toxic Use Reduction act, to force companies to cut the use, waste and spillage of toxic chemicals.

The European Union and the state of Vermont have similar product-labelling laws, and Tabuns said it's time Canada started catching up with those jurisdictions that help protect consumers from dangerous chemicals.

"This issue really has arrived, and the political momentum among the public is there," he said. "If the (Liberals) don't act, they will face the loss of support from environmentalists and public health advocates in the next election."

Source: CBC.ca

Smoking Visuals Decrease Habit

Graphic warnings on cigarette packs working, study says

SHERYL UBELACKER

Canadian Press/ Globe and Mail February 6, 2007

TORONTO — When it comes to changing the behaviour of smokers with warning labels on cigarette packages, it seems the bigger and more graphically in-your-face the better.

That's the conclusion of a four-year study that looked at differences in package warnings and their effects on smokers in Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States.

And it appears that Canada — with its large-sized warnings that include such photos as a mouthful of teeth with gums blackened by oral cancer and diseased lungs — leads the pack among the four countries in getting the anti-tobacco message across to smokers.

To conduct the study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers surveyed 15,000 adult smokers four times between 2002 and 2005. They asked a number of questions related to warnings on cigarette packages in participants' four respective countries, including whether they noticed them and how often they read them.

“We also asked if they noticed cessation information on packages, whether it makes them think about the health risks, as well as whether they've been stopped from having a cigarette because of the warnings or whether it's made them more likely to think about quitting,” said co-author David Hammond, an assistant professor of health studies and gerontology at the University of Waterloo.

“And what we find is that certainly when we started, the Canadian warnings performed far better than all of the others,” Mr. Hammond said from Waterloo, Ont.

In December, 2000, Canada was the first country in the world to put photos on cigarettes to go along with 16 different text messages in English and French, such as “Cigarettes Cause Lung Cancer” and “Cigarettes Cause Strokes,” that take up half the package, both front and back.

In 2002, when the first survey was conducted, Britain had six text warnings comprising just six per cent of packs, front and back; Australia's six were slightly larger (a quarter of the front and a third of the back); while the four U.S. warnings -- unchanged since 1984 -- are relegated to the side of the pack in small text.

In that first survey, warnings were noticed most often by Canadian smokers (60 per cent), followed by Australians (52 per cent), British smokers (44 per cent) and American tobacco users (30 per cent).

But Mr. Hammond said that since 2003, when Britain bumped up its text warnings to 16 and blew up their size to a third or more of the face and back of packages, “U.K. smokers are even more likely than Canadians to say that they look at and read the health warnings.”

The proportion of British smokers who reported noticing warnings “often” or “very often” soared to 82 per cent by the second survey.

“So what that tells us is . . . any time you refresh a health communication you're going to see an increase in the effectiveness, just because they're new.”

To adjust for the “novelty effect,” the researchers compared responses to Canadian warnings two and half years after they came out with those to British messages following the same period of time.

“What you find is that the Canadian warnings are either as good as or better than the U.K. warnings in every case,” said Mr. Hammond. “And in many ways it's common sense. The more vivid and engaging you make a warning, the more effective it is,” he said, pointing to how tobacco and other advertising campaigns employ pictures to sell their products.

“And so I think it really only makes sense to do the same when communicating health information.”

Roberta Ferrence, a senior scientist at the Centre for Mental Health and Addiction in Toronto, said the “innovative” study has produced a lot of important data on smokers' behaviour.

“Canada for most of the measures is the top or among the top responders with the highest proportion of people responding that it made them think, made them look and so forth.”

“And that's one of the key things that warnings are designed to do,” said Ms. Ferrence, executive director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit at the University of Toronto. She was not involved it the study.

While warnings are meant to affect tobacco users, “they can have an impact far beyond the actual smoker who's carrying the package,” she said.

“They create discussion. A parent can be sitting at the breakfast table and there's a pack on the table and a little kid says to him: ‘What does this mean Daddy?' when they see the picture.”

And for the smoker, the package is something they see “more than any billboard or anti-smoking ad or commercial,” she said. “This is something they see every time they have a cigarette.”

Ken Kyle, director of public issues for the Canadian Cancer Society, said the study provides further evidence of the effectiveness of large, picture-based warnings.

“It also provides additional rationale and encouragement to all countries that these warning labels should be adopted,” Mr. Kyle said in a statement. Several countries, including Brazil, Singapore and Thailand, have followed Canada's lead and introduced pictures on packages.

Mr. Hammond said picture warnings can also reach smokers with poor literacy skills compared to those with text-only warnings, an important factor among some Canadians and populations in countries with low education levels.

“I think looking forward to the next round of warnings in Canada. One way of making them more effective is to do things like include real stories from real smokers,” he said. “Conveying health information isn't just about listing diseases or giving statistics. It's about communicating risk in a meaningful way.”

Health Canada is conducting public consultations that may lead to new warning messages, a spokesman for the federal department said Monday. A proposal calls for 48 different warnings, with blocks of them displayed at any one time and rotated every two years.

“The proposed changes include creating messages of encouragement with information on the health benefits of quitting and tips on how to quit smoking,” said the spokesman. Revised warnings would likely not be implemented until late 2008 at the earliest.