Turns out that a passerby in downtown Ottawa noticed three boxes in the middle of Bank St. with radiation symbols on them. She called the police and several blocks of downtown Ottawa were cordoned off while the boxes were dealt with by emergency services. Personnel from SRB in Pembroke were called to retrieve the material, compressed tritium gas and lights bound for an undisclosed destination in the United States.

This could have been a disaster if the boxes had been run over and the contents released to the environment. Questions in our mind, such as why was SRB shipping compressed tritium gas by Purolator to the United States were never adequately answered by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Hearing about this left us shaking our heads. We had spent hours and hours on research, consultations with independent scientists, preparation of logical arguments and interventions and what had it got us? A deaf ear was turned to our concerns by the CNSC. SRB was rewarded with a five-year license and days after receiving it, their sloppy practices led to a large quantity of radiation being dropped on the street in downtown Ottawa.

Several years later we learned that the year 2000 was one of the two recent years on record when SRB Technologies released more radioactive tritium to the environment in the City of Pembroke, than all of Canada’s nuclear generating stations combined.

Lynn Jones, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, Pembroke

Dear Commission members, I live in one of the worst places one could ever live, right next door to a nuclear facility where the environment has become so polluted with tritium that people are becoming ill. I wonder how come the Commission could ever let this happen.

I believe that my wife and I had high levels of tritium in our bodies because of eating vegetables from our garden thatwere laced with tritium. What a shame to eat contaminated food when we thought we were eating organically vegetables grown in our own backyard; a garden that the wife and I worked very hard to grow. Concerned citizens of Renfrew County and the CNSC both took tests of gardens that showed we had high levels of tritium in our vegetables, more than anywhere else in Pembroke. Mr. Levesque stated at one of our meetings that tritium was very hard to understand and I agree with him. All I know is that one of the worst pollutants to cause cancer.

In 2001 I was diagnosed with cancer. I spent almost one year being treated in Ottawa. I still have to have a check-up every six months. In 2006 my wife was diagnosed with colon cancer — a healthy person — which had already spread throughout her body. The tumours in her body started about eight years ago, which is approximately the same time when SRB was releasing huge amounts of tritium into the environment. My wife, Sandra, has been very — has been terribly sick. She has received 24 chemo treatments so far and each time she is treated she is very sick. I used — she used to be so healthy; now she has all sorts of problems. Many nights she can’t sleep. We are always running to Renfrew or Ottawa for treatment or doctor appointments. Her appetite is very poor. She is full of pain, can’t eat or drink. Sandra was admitted to the Pembroke Regional Hospital June the 2nd. CT scans were taken and I was told the cancer has spread.

It is only a matter of time before, maybe one or two weeks, and she will die, just like all the rest of the people from our area. The people have been dying off just like flies. My wife has cancer, my neighbour’s wife died, the other fellow died right in a row. All cancer. And my neighbour’s wife died right across the road. All died of cancer. And more people have cancer. Two of my neighbours across the road died. They all died around that area — sorry — the rest of the people in the area. The people have been dying off just like flies.

I cannot understand why the government has not made a good survey instead of saying “Everything is ok”.

When the rhubarb sample came out of the counter, the lab manager was horrified to find that it contained tritium at the level of 2000 Bequerels per litre. This was a thousand times higher than samples he was used to analysing, as the lab specializes in “background” radiation measurement. He asked us to find another lab to test the aspen leaves, which we did. A story about this incident made the front page of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail with the headline “The Atomic Rhubarb of Pembroke” which made us very unpopular with local politicians, but that’s another story.

Lynn Jones,
Member of Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, Pembroke Ontario.