'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
There is more to learn about the consequences of intensifying wildfires on community watersheds across Canada, but a large, severe fire followed by heavy precipitation could seriously affect drinking water, says a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service.
An intense fire can burn through vegetation and soil that serve to absorb and more evenly distribute precipitation or melting snow, and also naturally filter sediment and toxins before the water evenreaches a community's drinking-water source, Francois-Nicolas Robinne said in an interview from Edmonton.
"This kind of sponge effect that the forest has, that the vegetation has, goes away. So you have more water running off earlier in the season," he said.
In a worst-case scenario that could lead to flash floods and flowing debris and it's likely to affect how much drinking water is available to a community and when, said Robinne, with drought compounding the potential impact of wildfire.
"You already have less water, it's already stretched pretty thin, and you have suddenly this huge input of water, but of pretty bad water quality, usually, after a large and severe fire," said Robinne, adding any drinking water would be treated to Canadian standards but it's costly to purify water polluted by wildfire.
It could be "mayhem" to go though a cycle of drought, wildfires, heavy rains and drought again, said Robinne, "because the pressure on the water resource would become so high that I can't even imagine what it would mean in terms of water supply for communities."
Water supply downstream is generally expected to be affected when about 20 per cent of a watershed is burned. That threshold has been met in nine B.C. community watersheds so far this year, said Robinne, with two of those burning up entirely.
Canada needs more data and analysis of the historical and ongoing effects of wildfires on watersheds, said Robinne, noting his work at the forest service involves looking at drinking water intakes and fire risk around communities countrywide.
In the long term, the most intense scorching may resemble "some form of desertification," he said. "We're not there yet, but it's definitely a cause for concern."
In general, Robinne suggests that communities in fire-prone areas undertake fuel management, or reducing the vegetation susceptible to fire in their watershed.
Communities may also consider updating older drinking water treatment systems to ensure water quality in the event their source is affected by wildfire, he said.
British Columbia government mapping shows the eight-kilometre square Brenda Creek fire burning out of control west of Peachland overlaps with that community's watershed. It shows numerous other "wildfires of note," which are either highly visible or pose a threat to public safety, are burning in or very close to other watersheds.
All of Vancouver Island, the south coast and stretches of the southern Interior are classified as drought level four out of five, with many municipalities and regions implementing measures to conserve water through the rest of the summer.
Environment Canada has also issued heat warnings that stretch from parts of Vancouver Island to the south coast and across the southern Interior, as well as the inner central and north coast all the way up to B.C.'s boundary with Yukon.
The hot, dry conditions have helped fuel more than 1,250 wildfires sparked since the start of B.C.'s fire season on April 1, charring over 4,500 square kilometres of land. The 10-year average is 658 fires and about 1,060 square kilometres burned over the same time period, officials with the BC Wildfire Service said last week.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 31, 2021.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.