Contrary to an international study this week that found residents in the Quebec town of Thetford Mines were living in a cloud of deadly asbestos pollution, the province's Environment Ministry has released its own report concluding the air is clean.

'This study is much more serious and credible than the one publicized earlier this week.'—Mayor of Thetford Mines Luc Berthold

The Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks published its conflicting paper shortly after the U.S.-based International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health declared that the town was "severely contaminated" by asbestos dust.

That article, published Wednesday, warned that the cancer-causing mineral was drifting into homes from mounds of leftover industrial waste, suggesting "a real public health threat in the Quebec mining areas."

Not so, according to the ministry's analysis, which was posted on Wednesday evening — the same day the journal article appeared.

'Pseudo-study'

After compiling outdoor air samples taken from across the province, the ministry's report detected no environmental risk to Thetford Mines, located about 100 kilometres south of Quebec City. The town of 26,000 has long been the centre of Canada's asbestos mining industry.

Mayor of Thetford Mines Luc Berthold pointed to the positive outcome from the government's findings to reassure citizens the air quality is nothing to worry about.

"This study is much more serious and credible than the one publicized earlier this week," Berthold said in a statement Thursday, discrediting the earlier paper as a "pseudo-study."

'Do not have to worry'

The province's evaluation was based on data collected this year from areas around Thetford Mines, Tring-Junction, Montreal and Quebec. The study confirms that "residents of the studied municipalities do not have to worry," Environment Minister Line Beauchamp said in a release.

Still, the team behind the journal's study maintains that health warnings in the Thetford Mines region are legitimate, considering the asbestos readings they recorded in 2003 and 2004.

The U.S. and Canadian health researchers tested dozens of homes and found that more than half of the 28 air samples they took contained asbestos fibres exceeding U.S. government safety limits.

Government stifling discussion

Micheline Marier, one of the journal article's authors and also the co-founder of the Asbestos Victims Association of Quebec, said the study was initiated by residents concerned about the mining of chrysotile asbestos in their region.

"Something very sad in Quebec is that it's impossible to talk about the risk of chrysotile without being told that we want to discredit Quebec," she said.

Marier suggested the Quebec government, dominated by the pro-asbestos lobby, was stifling discussion about the public health threat of asbestos.

"It's like there is something in our national identity that is linked with the success of our asbestos," she said.