Hmmmm! Very Interesting.......

Are there no other communities in the area that can be used as a model for comparison or is just another case of where the white man's industrial complex has been designed to impact only on indians?

First Nation concerned about startling birth ratio
Updated Mon. Apr. 23 2007 5:07 PM ET
Canadian Press

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Ont. -- The people of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation are painfully aware they make up a startling statistic that has raised eyebrows around the world, but the bigger concern for residents are the chemicals they fear are overwhelming their community and killing off their legacy.

The birthrate ratio of boys to girls normally observed in communities falls close to an even split. In Aamjiwnaang, records show two girls are being born for every boy - a scientific anomaly that has stunned researchers and that residents admit is clearly not normal.

"Our sense of normal is not normal," said Ada Lockridge, chairwoman of the Aamjiwnaang environment committee, and a mother of two girls.

Visitors to this reserve just outside the southwestern Ontario border community of Sarnia, Ont., are struck by the sight of dozens of massive industrial facilities spewing out smoke and their close proximity to the First Nations community of about 850.

Residents live in an area known as chemical valley - Canada's largest cluster of chemical, allied manufacturing and research and development facilities - and co-exist with smoke stacks and nauseating smells that carry with the wind.

The girl-boy ratio anomaly has been the subject of international study, most recently in an article published in Environmental Health Perspectives this month based on the work of researchers from the U.S. and Japan.

"To our knowledge, this is a more significantly reduced sex ratio and greater rate of change than has been reported previously anywhere," the study reads.

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