http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100830/wl_canada_nm/canada_us_oilsands_environment

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/asithappens_20100830_37482.mp3

Canada's vast oil sands operations are polluting the Athabasca
River system, researchers said on Monday, in a report that is bound to fuel the
environmental battle over developing the resource.

Contradicting Alberta government assertions that toxins in the watershed occur
naturally, the researchers said mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium are among 13
toxins released into the Athabasca, which flows north through the oil sands
operations.

The findings of the study, coauthored by University of Alberta biological
scientists Erin Kelly and David Schindler, should be a signal for the Alberta
provincial government to consider limits on oil sands development, Schindler
said.

"I really think it's time to cut down the expansion until some of those problems
and how to reduce them are solved," he said in an interview.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers the substances to be priority
pollutants, or ones that are toxic in low concentrations.

The environmental impact of developing the oil sands, the biggest reserves of
crude outside the Middle East, has been a topic of snowballing controversy
around the world. The Alberta government has devoted millions of dollars to
defend the multibillion-dollar industry.