Nickel Is Key To An Electric Vehicle Transition. Is Its Mining Making Canadians Sick

Joanne Boutet, 65, who grew up in the Limoilou neighborhood in Quebec City, says she had asthma as a child. Almost everyone in her class did. But when her family moved to Charlesbourg, a more affluent part of the city in the north, she remembers being one of the few with breathing problems. When Ms. Boutet returned as an adult, the eczema began to spread to her face and she suffered a severe asthma attack that put her in the hospital. “The first question the doctor asked me was if I live in Limousin,” he recalls. “When I told her I grew up there, she was convinced there was a connection.” Joanne Boutet, 65, at her home in Limousin. She treats her eczema, which appeared when she returned to the area, with cortisone cream. Limousin is next to Quebec’s international port where mined nickel is shipped, and there is growing concern among health experts that particulate matter in the air could affect the health of nearby residents. Provincial government statistics show atmospheric nickel levels in Limousin are higher than average. Between 2018 and 2021, the neighborhood exceeded the provincial nickel standard 50 times and increased to more than 14 times the maximum limit at least three times last year. And a government-sponsored study found that people in the working-class neighborhood are 1.3 times more likely to have asthma than those up the hill in Quebec’s Haute-Ville district. They are also 1.5 times more likely to be hospitalized for a respiratory illness. Concern about the potential impact nickel production has on people’s health, however, is at odds with the industry’s denial that it contributes to poor air quality and the provincial government’s push to be a leader in providing mineral resources for a green economy . Nickel is a key ingredient in batteries, especially for electric cars, and both the federal and provincial governments are supporting companies to boost production of the mineral. Véronique Lalande, a former resident of Limousin and representative of the citizens’ initiative Vigilance du Port de Québec, collected samples of the red dust covering Limousin. Residents suspected there might be problems, but awareness of the polluted air rose to public consciousness in 2012, when a cloud of red dust coming from the international port blanketed Limousin. The dust turned out to be from a pile of uncovered pulverized blood iron that blew in from the harbor. A class-action lawsuit was eventually launched and went to court where a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled that residents who found their homes covered in the red dust would be compensated for cleanup and damages. Véronique Lalande, who filed the class action, She has also suffered from eczema as well as increased allergy symptoms since moving into the neighborhood two years ago. Back in 2012, one day she noticed dust on her balcony and on her newborn’s hands. “I realized his face was red and he had put some in his mouth and I’m like, ‘Oh my God’.” Through dust samples and a search of air quality reports, he learned that Limousin averages the highest levels of atmospheric nickel in Canada. “That’s what really shook people up,” said Ms Lalande, who also heads a group of citizen activists focused on air quality in Limousin. Nickel, a naturally occurring metal found in rock deposits, is not considered dangerous except to those who are allergic – the World Health Organization estimates that about 2 percent of men and 11 percent of women have a skin reaction to nickel. Ms. Lalande is one of them. If inhaled through the air, nickel can be carcinogenic. “These smaller parts will go deep into the respiratory system, they can get into your blood,” Ms Lalande said. She has been called the Erin Brockovich of Limousin. “There is absolutely nothing normal about it.” Government statistics show that atmospheric nickel levels in Limousin are higher than average. There is growing concern among health experts that particulate matter in the air could affect the health of residents. Nickel is used in thousands of everyday products, from the Canadian five-cent coin to jewelry, but interest has increased because of its use in electric car batteries. In its 2022 budget, the federal government announced it was prepared to spend nearly $4 billion to fund the industry of minerals critical to EVs, including nickel. In Quebec, the largest nickel mine is owned by Glencore, a Swiss multinational company. It has been operating from Raglan since 1997, near the northern tip of the province, and produces 240,000 tonnes of feedstock annually, according to the company. Glencore also calls Raglan “one of the cleanest series of nickel deposits in the world.” From Raglan, Glencore ships nickel to the Port of Quebec, where it is unloaded into a sealed vault before being loaded onto rail cars bound for a smelter in Sudbury. At the smelter, it is partially refined and then returned to the port by rail. From there, it is transferred to another ship bound for a refinery in Norway to be sold as pure nickel. Maurice Moreau Environmental Management Systems, Glencore Canada leads for Ontario and Quebec, at Glencore’s facility in the Port of Quebec in Limousin. It places the blame for poor air quality elsewhere: wood stoves, municipal incinerators and car pollution, among other sources. During a tour of the port, Glencore’s head of environmental systems management for Quebec and Ontario said the company is not responsible for spewing nickel into the air at Limousin. “Nickel is of great value to us. That’s where we make our profits. We don’t want to lose nickel to the air,” Moe Moreau said. Mr Moreau said Glencore, which posted record profits of $18.9bn in the first half of 2022, had spent $60m over the past decade to improve atmospheric nickel capture mechanisms. Some of these improvements include updating the unloading machine to operate in orbit to unload 36 hours when the ship is open and the nickel is exposed to air. Glencore also added sealed doors instead of flaps to the building, where railcars are filled, and installed dry fog machines to spray the nickel into the ship, turning the dust into water molecules that fall back into the pile. Glencore, which is simultaneously embroiled in an air quality controversy over its Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., which emitted high levels of arsenic for decades that led to increased rates of lung cancer, will not release statistics air quality data recorded in the Port. Mr. Moreau says that “nickel does not come from the mining industry.” He blames Limoilou’s wood stoves, the salt that accumulates after snow removal, the municipal incinerator, the paper industry and car pollution. One study found that people in Limousin are 1.3 times more likely to have asthma and 1.5 times more likely to be hospitalized for respiratory illnesses, compared to those on the hill in Haute-Ville, Quebec. In 2013, a study by the Quebec Ministry of the Environment concluded that it is “highly unlikely” that the nickel in Limousin’s air comes from anywhere other than the port. He also found that the nickel contained an iron sulfide called pentlandite—a potentially more dangerous form of the metal. In Western Australia, where pentlandite is found, the standards are much stricter than in Canada. “We’re talking apples and bananas here,” said Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, who heads the Quebec chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (AQME). “The nickel that we find in Europe and Ontario is relatively benign, I mean it can cause respiratory distress but it’s not as carcinogenic as others. What we have in Quebec is what is most likely to cause cancer if there is long-term high exposure.” A petition signed by 18 Quebec health departments, including AQME, called on the government to take a deeper look at the effects of atmospheric nickel and reverse its decision in February to relax the province’s nickel standard — a move Glencore is lobbying for since 2013. “We have an industry that doesn’t pay the price for what it pollutes. They literally ask for more, and the government says yes, and then who suffers for it? The people of the city are the ones who are heard the least,” said Pétrin-Desrosiers. In an email, Quebec’s Environment Ministry defended its decision, citing a 2018 report conducted by Michèle Bouchard, chair of toxicological risk analysis and management at the University of Montreal. “Implementation of an annual standard … prevents the critical respiratory effects associated with it with repeated exposure to nickel and protects against the carcinogenic effects of all nickel compounds, including nickel sulfides.” Speaking to reporters in February, Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette said the decision to relax nickel air quality standards was made in response to increased demand for electric car batteries. “I have a very clear mandate to fight against climate change, to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “We need to electrify our transportation and to do that we need nickel.” Over 100 residents created a mural to demonstrate the community’s frustration with the poor air quality in Limousin. In Limoilou, there is a mural of a man wearing a gas mask standing with an umbrella beneath images of skull and bones, bombs and lightning bolts. The artwork was created with the participation of more than 100 local residents to demonstrate the community’s frustration. “We do not want…