Plateau area animal testers to clear the air

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by MICHAEL CITROME

Residents of the area around the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal at St-Urbain and des Pins may soon breathe easier thanks to information uncovered by last week's Mirror report. The pungent stench emanating from the IRCM will soon be a mere whiff of memory, according to comments made by IRCM officials last Thursday. "We'll be installing charcoal filters over the vents," says director of administration and human resources Jacqueline Turgeon.

The vents, part of a ventilation system installed in 1997, are set halfway up the building, facing onto St-Urbain. The air was supposed to be expelled upwards to dissipate into the sky but on days without wind it "just hangs around," according to molecular genetics lab director Jacques Drouin. Turgeon gives a timeframe of about eight weeks for the filters to be installed, but Drouin is uncertain, citing red tape as a major obstacle.

"I'm not sure if it will be done in eight weeks, to be realistic," he says. Drouin's lab is responsible for the odour, which is actually a super-concentrated pet shop smell, caused by what is, according to Drouin, "a few hundred cages of mice and rats." Nothing is dead and nothing is being incinerated, they say, but both Drouin and Turgeon readily admit that the stench is quite vile.

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