Court ruling opens door to making the right to a health environment real
Environment Week has come to a close, but what matters most is what happens after the awareness campaigns end. People in Canada are left with an important question: what does the right to a healthy environment actually mean in practice?
One of the most consequential environmental decisions of the year has received far less attention than it deserves. Earlier this year, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the Government of Canada's authority to regulate plastic manufactured items as toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), reinforcing Ottawa's ability to give practical meaning to the right to a healthy environment. This decision underscores the importance of upstream prevention as one of the most powerful tools available to protect public health. In a world where people are exposed to pollution through multiple pathways—from wildfire smoke and other climate-driven air quality impacts, to toxic chemicals and microplastics in food, water, and consumer products—this legal authority is increasingly significant.
For physicians, that matters because environmental exposures are increasingly shaping health outcomes across Canada—and not only on Clean Air Day or during Environment Week. We are reminded of something physicians witness every day: the quality of our environment shapes the quality of our health. From wildfire smoke and industrial emissions to PFAS and microplastics, harmful exposures increasingly move through the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the products we use. For years, physicians and health advocates have warned that exposure to toxic substances is not simply an environmental issue. It is a human health issue.
These exposures are not isolated environmental concerns. They are cumulative public health risks that require prevention at their source. Pollution does not affect everyone equally. Indigenous communities, racialized communities, and lower-income neighbourhoods often experience disproportionate exposure to industrial pollution, traffic emissions, and contaminated environments. Protecting health therefore requires not only reducing pollution overall, but addressing environmental inequities that persist across Canada.
For the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and its partners, who intervened in support of the government, this is a major step forward for public health. The Court’s decision matters because it preserves one of the federal government’s most important tools for prevention. By maintaining the listing of plastic manufactured items as toxic under CEPA, the ruling allows Canada to regulate problematic single-use plastics.
Plastics are not simply waste products; they are fossil fuel-derived materials embedded in every stage of modern life. From extraction and refining through manufacturing, use, and disposal, each stage of the plastic lifecycle contributes to human exposure through toxic emissions, chemical additives, microplastic generation, and releases during incineration and breakdown. This means that plastic pollution is not confined to landfills or oceans, but is continuously circulating through air, water, food systems, and human bodies.
From a health perspective, prevention is essential. Physicians do not have clinical tools to remove microplastics from a patient’s bloodstream, and we cannot prescribe our way out of cumulative toxic exposures that occur upstream in industrial systems. There is a growing body of research linking plastic-associated chemicals with endocrine disruption, reproductive harms, neurodevelopmental effects, and cancer risks. While scientific uncertainty remains in some areas, the precautionary principle is clear: waiting for perfect evidence while exposures continue to rise is not a health-protective strategy.
At the same time, this ruling is not the end of the story. Several priorities now come into focus.
First, governments must fully implement and strengthen the existing single-use plastics prohibition regulations. Regulatory authority only protects health if it is used decisively.
Second, Canada should expand its approach beyond a narrow set of products toward broader measures that reduce overall plastic production and the toxic chemical load embedded in materials.
Third, the health sector has an important role in illuminating and advancing the right to a healthy environment by documenting harms, communicating risks clearly, and supporting evidence-based policy. Science is advancing quickly.
The policy window is open. What happens next will determine whether this legal victory translates into meaningful health protection for communities across Canada.
Dr. Helen Hsu is a Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) representative, and a physician specializing in addiction and mental health. Jane McArthur, PhD, is the Preventing Toxic Exposures Program director at CAPE.
The Hill Times