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52 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
52 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
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DUMPING OUR TOXIC WASTES ON THE THIRD WORLD
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Exporting hazardous and toxic wastes to Third World countries is
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a growth industry. The exported material includes heavy metal residues
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and chemical-contaminated wastes, pharmaceutical refuse, and municipal
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sewage sludge and incinerator ash. The risks involved for countries
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that accept our wastes range from contamination of groundwater and
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crops to birth defects and cancer.
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Traditionally, the majority of U.S. toxic waste exports have gone
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to Canada where regulations are less stringent than in the U.S. But
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now the most abrupt increase is in shipments to the Third World where
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the regulations are either nonexistent or sketchily enforced.
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Creating the search for new overseas markets is an explosion in
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the volume of recorded hazardous wastes beng produced in the U.S.
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According to the General Accounting Office, the amount rose from about
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9 million metric tons in 1970 to at least 247 million in 1984; other
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experts place the current figure close to 400 millon metric tons.
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U.S. officials, aware of the sensitive legal and foreign policy
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questions involved, are reluctant to crack down on illegal dumpers
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and, in fact, the government itself is reponsible for generating a
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significant portion of the hazardous waste exports. One large illegal
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operation broken up last year received more than half its toxic wastes
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from various branches of the Federal government, mainly the military.
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Some examples of what is happening as discovered by the authors
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using court records, interviews, and the Freedom of Information Act:
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Philadelphia is planning to ship 600,000 tons of ash residue a
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year from its municipal incinerator to Panama which plans to use the
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materials as landfill for roadbeds;
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U.S. sludge may end up in the tiny British Caribbean colony of
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Turks and Caicos Islands which proposes to use it as fertilizer;
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L.P.T., a company with offices in American Samoa and California,
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is seeking approval to build an incinerator in American Samoa to burn
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U.S. wastes and export the ash to the Philippines where it would be
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used as landfill;
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Western Pacific Waste Repositories, based in Carson City, Nevada,
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is poposing to build a hazardous waste storage and treatment plant on
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Erikub atoll, an unhinhabited area of the Marshall Islands.
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The key U.S. government officials responsible for monitoring
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waste traffic claim they are powerless. "Under the federal system, we
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only have control over what's in the country," says Wendy Grieder, an
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official in the EPA's Office of International Activities. "Once it
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leaves, we can't do anything about it."
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Finally, exported wastes may return to haunt us in a very direct
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way. "It's possible that we could send sludge to the Caribbean and
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they might use it on, say, spinach or other vegetables," warned
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Grieder. And since the Food and Drug Administation checks only a
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small portion of foods and vegetables that come into the U.S.,
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exported hazardous wastes could easily end up on our dinner table.
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SOURCE: THE NATION, 10/3/87 "The Export of U.S. Toxic Wastes," by
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Andrew Porterfield and David Weir, pp front cover, 341-344.
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