By Zadie Neufville
OLD HARBOUR, Jamaica, Aug 8 2001 (IPS)

For more than ten years, residents of the Succaba Pen squatter community in this south coast fishing village have lived on land contaminated with asbestos, a potent health hazard.

A few kilometres down the road, some of the children in Red Pond still suffer the effects of lead poisoning. And in Kintyre, not too far from the University district of Papine, scientists have only just begun to see reductions in the amount of lead in children’s blood.

All three cases are the result of the improper disposal of hazardous material because there is no proper chemical dump. Scientists fear that, despite several initiatives to remove the threats, many more people are still at risk.

A spokesperson for the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), which is responsible for protecting the local environment, says it is continuing the search for a chemical dump site. It started 10 years ago.

In the absence of a hazardous waste dump, the responsibility for storing chemical waste rests with those who produce it.

There are official guidelines and monitoring programmes but these are insufficient, says Ishenkumba Kahwa, a professor of molecular chemistry at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

The continued absence of a properly regulated site for hazardous wastes promotes improper dumping, Kahwa says, pointing an incident last year in the resort of Montego Bay, in which several city blocks had to be evacuated after some chlorine cylinders exploded.

The Planning Institute of Jamaica reports that no one knows the amount of chemicals imported onto the island each year. NEPA says hazardous materials in storage include, but are not limited to, bromine, lead acid battery shells, obsolete pesticides, and unidentified laboratory chemicals.

Basil Fernandez, who heads the underground water authority, says finding a site and building a dump are difficult and expensive tasks because Jamaica is one big watershed.

Much of Kingston’s water supply has been lost due to contamination from the disposal of waste from ethanol. And the caustic residue from a bauxite red mud-lake in Moneague, several kilometres outside Ocho Rios, has contaminated 13 square kilometres of acquifers in surrounding areas.

Kahwa says he is concerned that, more than five years after he led a team that exposed the hazards at Succaba Pen, nothing has been done to remove the people or correct the problem. The housing site sits between two new housing developments – one private, the other built by the government, and lies atop a former dumpsite for a now defunct asbestos pipe manufacturing plant.

The danger to the squatters has been exacerbated by the pilfering of asbestos pipes from old factories and their use in building the squatters’ shacks.

The cost of replacing the topsoil, which is what was done at Red Pond, is prohibitive, Kahwa says. But unless something is done, he adds, children at the site could begin developing lung and respiratory disorders from inhaling asbestos fibres.

Current chemical waste storage and disposal methods favour large companies. Wayne Sucklal, an environmental officer at NEPA, says bauxite companies often bury asbestos, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PBCs), and other waste on their properties.

This has not always been a safe practice. More than 20 years ago, disposal standards at a cement company had to be changed when several children suffered severe burns after venturing into a fenced dumpsite.

Red Pond’s lead problem began with the proliferation of back yard battery making businesses. Residents had been taking old batteries and battery casings from the dumpsite of a manufacturer at the edge of the low- income community. Many set up smelting operations in a bid to make ends meet – but at the expense of the health of their children, who were exposed to poisonous substances.

Researchers found in 1998 that Kintyre’s problem surrounded an old lead mining operation. A pre-school had been located in the building that had served as the processing plant for the ore and the schoolyard and environs had been grossly contaminated by ore and lead-rich mine waste.

While the Pesticide Control Authority argues that there are safeguards to prevent further build up of unwanted chemicals, Kahwa says this won’t prevent unauthorised dumping. Old generators containing PCBs turned up among the farms of Hill Run, St. Catherine, a few years ago.

Nowadays, most of the PCBs used in bauxite and power generation are shipped to France for disposal.

In 1993, several tonnes of chemical waste was exported for destruction following the establishment of a Joint Technical Committee for developing methods and safety criteria for the handling, storage, and disposal of PCBs. Two years later, more than 8,000 kilogrammes of obsolete pesticides were exported for destruction.

NEPA assures that while the search for a site continues, more effective and safer methods of storage are being explored. The agency also conducts random verification monitoring visits that include assessment of waste storage areas to ensure the storage conditions are safe.

Several agencies are also involved in monitoring the use and disposal of chemicals. The Ministry of Labour’s Industrial Safety Division says it also has an interest in the amounts and types of hazardous materials being utilised by each factory and maintains a chemical registry for manufacturing plants across the island.

The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management is conducting a hazardous waste material inventory. A spokesperson says this should indicate the amounts and types of waste that await final disposal

In the absence of a place for biological waste from hospitals, the Ministry of Health is also involved in monitoring dumps.

There have been some successes: Researchers reported earlier this year that only two lead-poisoning cases were found in Red Pond after an intervention project launched by health care provider Blue Cross of Jamaica.

Professor Gerald Lalor, chairman of the UWI Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences, announced in May that that a four-year follow-up of a new generation of children attending the school indicates much better blood lead levels after a clean-up of the site under taken by the centre.

Kahwa’s immediate concern is air-borne asbestos fibres and the fact that many more Jamaicans are at risk as environmentally conscious companies remove the substance from their old buildings.

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