The land surrounding River Road near the Ottawa airport is sparsely populated with houses, an Asian restaurant and a large government laboratory. These buildings are sitting just metres – for the lab right on top of – an active, high priority contaminated site, according to an analysis of data from the Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory.

335 River Road is an Environment and Climate Change Canada laboratory, where they study chemical contaminants and oil spills. According to Samantha Bayard, Environment Canada spokesperson, the site once housed a manufacturing facility that could have contaminated the area.

She added, however, that the lab has “a number of storage tanks and there are hazardous materials stored onsite.”

The soil and groundwater around the laboratories are contaminated with chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and halogenated hydrocarbons. Both occur naturally but can be harmful in large amounts.

According to Richard Amos, a Carleton environmental studies professor who specializes in groundwater contaminants, PAHs refer to a larger group of toxins. The harm from these chemicals differs depending on the specific compound, said Amos. The specific compounds on the site are not listed.

“You really don’t want any of them in your drinking water,” said Amos, hand drawn illustrations of chemical compounds sitting on his desk. “Most of these are going to be harmful at some level.”

The full extent of the contamination at this site isn’t yet known. According to the government listing, the site has only had initial testing done, and it was ranked high priority under the National Classification System for Contaminated Sites.

According to the system, high priority means the site typically “shows a propensity for high concern for several factors, and measured or observed impacts have been documented.”

National Classification System for Contaminated Sites (Text)

It isn’t just Environment Canada that has contaminated sites near major city centres. There are a total of 14 active, high priority federal contaminated sites within the Ottawa area alone.

 

The chemicals at 335 River Road are in the groundwater, according to the listing. Contamination in the groundwater doesn’t necessarily pose a problem on its own, said Amos, given that there isn’t much besides bacteria to be contaminated. The issues arise, however, when the water moves from underground.

The Environment Canada labs are located right beside the Rideau River.

“If contaminants are near a river, it makes it more of a problem because they can be transported more easily,” said Amos, and therefore can affect both the local ecosystem and human health.

Amos said that public knowledge is critical. According to Sabrina Kim, assistant to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, a notice was sent to stakeholders and locals in the community about the site at the end of October this year. She said no one has complained or responded to her office about the notice.

Staff for the ward councillor of Gloucester-Southgate – where the site is – were completely unaware of the site. The staff at Angry Dragonz – the Asian restaurant just down the road from the site – were equally unaware of it, as was the single customer having lunch who works in the area.

“They don’t advertise it, so how would we know?” said the cook at the Angry Dragonz, who did not want to be named. “If we’re not looking for it, how would we know it’s there?”

Bayard declined to answer further questions about the site when asked about the content of the notice and who it was sent to.

The extent – and cost – of fixing the issues of this site are still unknown. According to Bayard, the second round of testing on the site is scheduled to begin this month and will last until March.

Two years ago, Jordan Harding remembers waiting for an apartment in the Glebe. He was told rent would be $1,375 per month. Six months later when it became available, he said the rent had increased to $1,750, almost 30 per cent more.

Harding isn’t the only one to notice dramatic rent increases in Ottawa. Across the city and its surrounding areas, rent has been crawling – and in some places leaping – up.

On average, rent in Ottawa has increased 14.2 per cent from 2011 to 2016, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada’s 2016 census data. Areas in Gloucester, Nepean and Alta Vista have seen increases higher than 50 per cent.

There are several factors that can contribute to rent increases, said Anne-Marie Shaker, senior analyst with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The corporation reports on housing statistics across the country, and Shaker wrote the report on the 2016 rental market in Ottawa.

According to Shaker, renovations to existing buildings and completions of new ones are two main factors causing dramatic rent increases. The newer units and buildings have more amenities, so landlords can charge higher rent. In areas like the Glebe, where few buildings are being constructed, renovations are a more likely factor driving up rent prices.

Ontario’s rental prices are controlled by the province. Existing tenants can only have their rent increased every 12 months, and only by around two per cent. The number varies year by year depending on the market, but hovers around two per cent. New tenants can be charged what the landlords ask, but can only have their rent increased after 12 months in the unit.

Harding decided not to take the Glebe apartment and found a two-bedroom house in Ottawa’s west end, near Nepean.

It’s an old wooden house – the kind that creaks when the heat comes on – that costs him $1,850 per month, excluding utilities. According to data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation on completed rental units in Ottawa, Nepean saw one of the hightest growths in new rental units from 2011 to 2016.

These new units, according to Shaker, are a factor that drive up rent prices for the surrounding buildings, like Harding’s.

“It’s not reasonable at all,” said Harding, a website developer who works primarily from home, stacking three monitors, speakers and two servers on his kitchen table. “I’ve rented three-bedroom penthouses 10 years ago in Ottawa for $1,050.”

Renters would be hard-pressed to find many apartments at that price anywhere in Ottawa now, with average rent crawling up to $1,440 in 2016 according to the census data.

Some areas of Ottawa saw increases in rent as high as 87 per cent. That’s more than 17 per cent per year, significantly above Ontario’s rent increase guidelines which hover around two per cent.

 

Peter Dazé, another long-time Ottawa renter, said he has seen an increase every year for 25 years, although it’s rarely more than the two per cent guideline.

“If I didn’t get an increase, I would think something was wrong,” said Dazé from his office at Public Services and Procurement Canada. “I expect an increase, always, always, always.”

He admitted that such increases can pose challenges. “Some years, I’ve gotten rent increases, but my salary did not go up during those years,” he said. “So it causes some grief, some stress.”

It was that stress that inspired Harding to create a website, rentalreport.ca. It’s a portal for renters across Canada to share information about their unit, like cost of rent.

“It’s just good for people to know what they’re getting themselves into,” said Harding. He said knowing the previous tenant’s rent could be “a good bargaining chip” in lowering rent prices.

Harding is set to move back to the Glebe next month, into a two-bedroom apartment for $2,500. While he said it’s way more than he’d like to pay in rent, it’s still cheaper than buying it.

Featured photo: New buildings can drive up the rent of the surrounding buildings, says Anne-Marie Shaker with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. | Photo by Rachel Levy-McLaughlin

Redound Spa in Ottawa has been issued a total of 86 health and safety violations since 2013, with a median of 8 infractions per inspection, according to an analysis of the City of Ottawa’s public health inspections data.

The spa, located on Bank Street in Centretown, has received the vast majority of its infractions for improperly sterilizing and cleaning equipment and the surrounding area (using linens for one customer only, ensuring surfaces are properly cleaned).

The three most common infractions were for using improperly sterilized or unsterilized equipment. As a spa and hair salon, there are two separate infractions for sterilizing and cleaning equipment, one for general equipment (hair scissors, brushes) and the other specific for manicure and pedicure equipment (cuticle cutters, foot scrubs).

The other most common infraction was for using equipment more than once that cannot be sterilized or disinfected. This is typically manicure and pedicure equipment. The regulations stipulate that such equipment must be single-use, meaning the spa employees were using the same tool for multiple clients.

These three types of infractions were each indicated in 9 of the 11 recorded inspections the city has publicly available for the spa.

Despite several phone calls, voicemails and in-person attempts, the owner of the spa was unavailable for comment.

Inspections are routine as part of the City of Ottawa’s regular check-ins for institutions like spas, tattoo parlours and hair salons to ensure they follow Ontario’s health and safety protocols.

According to a spokesperson from Ottawa Public Health, the health inspectors use “educational, procedural, and re-inspection measures to ensure compliance” with the regulations. The spokesperson said that the inspectors can “take action” with institutions that present health hazards, like forced shut down or removing the items the officer deems hazardous. What constitutes a health hazard is determined by the health officers.

While action notes from the inspections officer are not available in the data, re-inspection appears to be one method public health officers have taken in the past with Redound Spa. On August 12, 2015, the spa received six infractions, below their median count. Just one week later, on August 19, there was another inspection and the spa only received one infraction. According to the data, the interval between regular inspections is at least one month.

There was another instance where two inspections similarly took place a week or so apart, in 2013.

Katherine McMahon visited Redound Spa last month on a Groupon coupon, and she says she will never go there again. She says that while she was there for a manicure, the nail technician cut her finger with the cuticle cutters.

“She cut it bad,” said McMahon, who moved to Ottawa from France in June so was trying to find a new salon. “It was just bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.”

She said the spa employee tried several ways to stop the bleeding, including pouring the alcohol used for the manicures, dipping it in cold water, and she said the employee even tried using nail glue (to adhere fake nails) to hold the skin together.

She said that the employee did not apologize and continued using the same tools that had cut her finger.

“They could have managed it so differently which is why I left such a nasty review,” said McMahon.

Of course, accidents do happen and this may not constitute a health and safety infraction, however using the same tools after the finger was cut might raise some public health eyebrows.

The most recent available health inspection dates June 9 of this year, with a count of six infractions.

Featured image: Redound Spa in Ottawa receives an average of almost 8 infractions per health and safety inspection. [Photo © Rachel Levy-McLaughlin]

Women in Ottawa are being hospitalized for self-harm almost double the rate of men, according to an analysis of data that a national research institute uses to track hospitalizations.

Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that 462 women were hospitalized in Ottawa last year for self-inflicted injuries such as burning, cutting, overusing drugs or attempting suicide in other means, compared to 270 men. That’s around eight women for every five men.

This trend is visible consistently in Ottawa dating back from 2010, the earliest date the data provides. But according to specialists, that is only part of the story.

“Women use different methods to attempt, so they tend to stay alive,” said Renée Ouimet in an interview. She is the coordinator of the Ottawa Suicide Prevention Coalition, which is run through the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Ottawa branch. The coalition runs workshops and trains Ottawa residents on how to manage suicide attempts.

She said that the means women use, in general, tend to leave time for the person to be discovered, whereas men tend to use more violent, and faster means.

Ouimet said that it isn’t really an issue of women attempting suicide more frequently than men. She said the numbers for attempted suicide are about equal, men to women, but that men tend to ‘complete’ suicide more frequently. She also said that women seek help more often, and that mental health programs tend to be geared more towards females.

Ouimet made a point of differentiating beteen self-inflicted injuries and suicide attempts, stating they are often different things. “You can self harm and cut and burn for years and years and never attempt suicide,” said Ouimet. She did note that many who do self-harm, however, may also attempt suicide at some point.

For the purposes of having clean, unambiguous data, the health institute slots attempted suicides with self-inflicted injury leading to hospitalization into the same category.

Mark Patton, a counsellor with Family Services Ottawa, said in an email exchange that in his work he sees the trend of more women self-harming than men. He said that in his experience, however, men tend to cut less but tend to use “methods of self-harm that are more ambiguously self-harm.” If someone is driving recklessly, he said, or drinking heavily, are these methods of self-harm?

The data would say no, but it is confined to a strict definition of self-injury.

Patton said that might be a sign of bias. “When most people think about self-harm, they likely imagine a girl or woman who cuts,” he said, so other forms of subtler self-injury are not being accounted for.

The health institute stipulates that this category includes only what is clearly self-inflicted injuries requiring hospitalization, meaning only those actually admitted to the hospital, not just the emergency room. It also recognizes that many cases were likely intentional self-harm but could not be listed in that category unless the practitioners or nurses were certain it was deliberate.

That means there are even more hospitalizations for self-injury than currently visible in the data.

Even without those cases, Ottawa hospitals still see hundreds of female patients for self-inflicted injuries. This trend of women being hospitalized more for self-harm is present across the province and even across the country.

** If you are in distress or considering suicide, there are places to turn for support, including the Ontario Suicide Prevention Network at 416-670-4689. The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention also has information about where to find help.**