ENVIRONMENT-YUGOSLAVIA: UN Voices Worries About War Effects

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jul 27 1999 (IPS) - The NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia was not an “ecocide,” but a number of dangerous minerals and chemicals found near industrial targets generate “many concerns and serious worries,” a United Nations mission said here Tuesday.

A team of experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Centre for Human Settlements’ Balkans Task Force (BTF) ended a ten-day mission in Yugoslavia to assess the impact of 11 weeks of heavy aerial bombardments.

However, it is “too early to have any firm conclusions on the environmental impact” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) air campaign against the country, Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s former Ecology minister and BTF chairman said.

He said that a full assessment will be made known to the public by the end of September, when the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan will receive a comprehensive report.

The team conducted extensive soil and ground water samples near bombed industrial sites, which will be followed up by another series of tests in August.

Yugoslav experts have also warned that emissions coming from the intense NATO air traffic have thinned the ozone layer above the Balkans and the Adriatic sea. The ozone layer filters ultraviolet rays, which cause skin cancer and damage plants and animals.

At least 23 petrochemical plants, oil refineries and fuel depots were bombed by NATO, as well as at least another 121 major industrial plants containing various chemicals and substances dangerous to human health, according to the Yugoslav Environment ministry.

Thousands of tons of highly toxic chemicals were released onto the air, soil and water in this densely populated country with an area of 102,173 square kilometres.

With “good cooperation” from the Yugoslav authorities, the team carried detailed research in Pancevo – 15 km northeast of Belgrade – where a fertiliser plant, a petrochemical complex and an oil refinery were hit several times, haavisto said.

All three are situated within an eight sq km region and within hundreds of metres of residential buildings.

After Pancevo, the BTF team visited the Novi Sad oil refinery, the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac, a transformer factory in Nis, a copper complex in Bor and fuel depots in Kraljevo, Prahovo and Pristina.

So far, the first tests of samples taken at those places show that traces of mercury, PCB Pyralene (used in lubricants) and asbestos remain in the environment.

After the destruction of the Pancevo industrial complex last April, local experts said that large quantities of stored ethylene- dichloride (a probable carcinogen, known to cause damage to kidneys and liver), chlorine, propylene, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), mercury and ammonia were released onto the atmosphere, the Danube river and soil.

They warned of imminent danger to ecological systems locally and in the broader Balkan region.

The Yugoslav Environment ministry confirmed at the time that the burning Pancevo refinery produced a cloud of smoke 1.5 kilometres wide, three kilometres high and 20 kilometres long, which lasted 10 days, contaminating a 15-km area around the plant.

Five days after the bombing, concentrations of different toxic agents were measured to be four to eight times above safe limits. Thousands of residents were evacuated, suffering from eye and skin irritations and respiratory difficulties that lasted for days.

Physicians have advised local women to avoid pregnancy for at least two years and abortions to those who were less than nine weeks pregnant at the time.

Severe and continuous NATO bombing of power stations and transformers released the highly dangerous pollutant known as PCB Pyralene. PCBs are man made organic substances used in transformer oils, known to cause skin and liver cancer and male sterility.

PCB poisoning can be passed from mother to child by breast- feeding. Traces of PCBs were still present in the town of Kragujevac, the UN experts said.

Predrag Polic, a chemistry professor at Belgrade University, describes the environment problems as “serious”.

“There was a 100 percent rise in pollution levels in Serbia at the time of NATO air raids” Polic told IPS. “We could say that the country was extremely polluted and still there are serious spots of concern for us.”

“That is why we need foreign help in assessment of immediate and impact and future consequences too, in order to deal with environmental problems properly” he added.

Haavisto told IPS that Yugoslav experts “asked for further help and advice for environmental problems”.

“Experts here were aware of somehow poor environmental regulations and care in the pre-conflict days, but they are certainly willing to do as much as they can, with international assistance, to make things improve” he said.

Serbian Environment minister Branislav Blazic recently told journalists that problems will be properly assessed only in years to come.

“I doubt that anyone has experience with a pollution of such proportions, in one area, in such a short time, as we have witnessed here after 11 weeks of daily air raids by NATO,” Blazic said.

“Only in a year or two we’ll be able to make a proper judgment on what was the real impact of bombing in our country, and those around us,” he added.

By the end of August another UN team will conduct further research in Yugoslavia and the Danube’s downstream to the Black Sea.