Advocate to reduce air pollution

Here is a template letter to the Minister of the Environment. You may wish to personalize it with any information you wish about yourself or your family, especially if anyone has heart disease. You may copy and paste the letter into an e-mail message or into a document and send by mail. The Minister’s e-mail address is Baird.J@parl.gc.ca You’re also welcome to send this letter to your provincial and municipal government representatives.

Honourable John Baird, PC, MP
Minister of the Environment
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ont. K1A 0A6 

February 2008 

Dear Minister,

I am writing to you regarding the urgent need to reduce air pollution in Canada.

Recently, the Heart and Stroke Foundation issued its annual report highlighting the serious threat that air pollution poses to the cardiovascular health of Canadians. We know conclusively that air pollution affects the health of Canadians. For example:

  • The federal government has conservatively estimated that 5,900 premature deaths occur annually in eight large Canadian cities as a result of air pollution and that 69% of these deaths are in the form of heart disease and stroke.
  • Both short and long-term exposures to air pollution have been shown to contribute to cardiovascular disease. For example, one recent study concluded that long term exposure to fine particulate air pollution was directly associated with the incidence of cardiovascular disease and death among postmenopausal women.
  • Residential exposure to highly trafficked roads is associated with coronary atherosclerosis, a condition which causes plaque to build up in the arteries, which increase the risk of blockages in the arteries, which in turn increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.

The federal government can undertake the following actions to improve the impact of air pollution on heart health:

  • Improve Canadians’ knowledge about air pollution levels by rolling out across the country a national Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) to give Canadians in all parts of the country easy-to-understand information on daily air quality, along with clear recommendations to Canadians regarding how they can limit exposure to air pollution.
  • Strengthen federal legislation governing air quality by including National Air Quality Standards in order to ensure that emissions controls truly result in cleaner air.
  • Provide public awareness and incentive programs to encourage consumer and industry action to reduce air pollution.
  • Increase investments in public transit within and between urban centres across the country, including investments in high speed rail in the Quebec City-Ottawa-Windsor corridor, and between Edmonton and Calgary.
  • Enact regulations that ensure that all wood burning stoves, fireplaces and fireplace inserts for sale in Canada conform to the particulate emission requirements of the Canadian standard and are well labeled to indicate compliance with the standard.
  • Allocate at least 7% of federal transportation-related infrastructure to active transportation infrastructure that facilitates walking and cycling, such as bike paths, walking trails and sidewalks, in order to reduce auto dependency and air pollution.

I urge you to act quickly on these recommendations in order to improve the heart-health of Canadians across the country.

Sincerely,

Enter Name Here