A Tragi-Comedy in Several Parts

Scaremongering A La Mode….or “plus ca change”……

Characters: the usual suspects, Production : Croydon Advertiser, Feb and March 1995 (Public kept in dark over contaminated gasworks…and Gasworks row flares up…), Values: plenty on resale

Enter stage left:

Foe Croydon (Paul de Zylva):
“There is a toxic legacy from the days of town gas production, with all sorts of chemicals seeping into the subsoil. British Gas has a huge public liability to clear its sites up." ( Independent consultants had identified arsenic, mercury, chromium, nickel and cadmium…but no mention was made of the complex hydrocarbons and dioxins guaranteed to be there as well).

British Gas:
“We have nothing to hide over work on sites which might be contaminated. We only sell them to reputable buyers. The reason why detailed studies of pollution are not made available for public inspection is because soil analysis procedures are extremely complex for the non-specialist. General publication can lead to a misleading perception of the actual risk, and result in pressure to carry out remedial works which may not resolve the real problem." (!)

Foe Tandridge (Barbara Child):
"Local residents have a right to be kept informed of any potential contamination in their area, and should not be kept in the dark on a need to know basis." ( Godstone Road, Whyteleaf)

Sir Paul Beresford ( Central Croydon MP and junior environment minister):
“The friends of the earth campaign has been alarmist and irresponsible. It’s not fair on people living nearby and makes me really cross. Perhaps they are having a go at me because I am an environment minister. I insist that there are adequate safeguards to make sure that once-polluted sites pose no danger. The information is complex. If you go to a doctor he might give you a prescription, but he doesn’t explain the complicated details of the drug." (really? some doctor!)

The curtain falls...

Some years later…..time having passed by…..the greater understanding of particulates.....dioxins..... The Corby Judgement…..the 2007 graph of early neonatal deaths is published by Croydon PCT (see below)…..new developments around Factory Lane…new residues from new incinerators to deal with.

Part the Second:

“Parallel Processes”
….procurement and public consultation (they never meet)

the audience feels its going backwards to the future !?

LORRIES AND CHIMNEYS

LORRIES,CHIMNEYS and A DUTY OF CARE

There is no doubt that air pollution from cars and lorries contributes to the causes of birth defects and low birth weight, in a general way. Last week the Corby judgement proved that special lorries carrying special cargo did the same, in a very spectacular way.

Birth defect, low birth weight and infant mortality increases around incinerators have almost always been attributed to the chimney emissions, and only one study looked at vehicular traffic and incinerator emissions together. It found that as road traffic increased, so did birth defect rates, in proportion. Birth defects near those incinerators were also raised,the nearer the more.

Croydon’s own figures on congenital malformations are ( for whatever reason) not being made publicly available, though they are collected and sent to the Office of National Statistics. A graph of early neonatal mortality (within 7 days of birth) is the nearest we can get to this important area.

As you can see above, Croydons own impressive improvement is suddenly halted by a peak in the early eighties,and a number of other peaks follow.The 1994-2002 looks very serious, and is almost coterminous with the period that Croydon often featured at the top of Londons PCT figures for birth defects, shown in Dr Ryans research .This is not commented on or explained in the document (Croydon Child Health 2007).

As Croydon Council seeks to embark on commissioning a variety of incinerators don’t you think that a special study of Croydons traffic pollution (particulates especially),the power station emissions, the Factory Lane dusts,Beddington lane dusts, land reclamation dusts and incinerator dusts is absolutely essential.One senior Italian researcher expressed the opinion that he thought it totally irresponsible to commission new waste facilities without including public health monitoring as mandatory.You will look in vain for this in the first and second SLWP consultation documents.

In view of the serious expense of litigation, isn`t it imperative that Croydon Council does not lay itself open to accusations of gross negligence, as did Corby,whatever the SLWP decides?The population of Corby is about 53,000….the area affected by the incinerator plumes and road movements could contain nearer 500,000.

In this split between each of the four boroughs,the SLWP and the final contractors,where will the legal and financial responsibility for compenstaion rest?

CORBY:Council and Health Authority Denials

CORBY: TEN YEAR HEALTH AUTHORITY and COUNCIL DENIAL

Despite the very well known dangers of heavy metals and dioxin dusts Corby Council has spent millions of council-tax payers money on defending the indefensible.It would not surprise me if other groups started actions,in other parts of the country,and on many other health issues.
Now, the Health Protection Agency is insisting to local authorities that incinerators are safe, having done no research on birth defects and infant mortality around London’s incinerators, and refusing to publish the figures it has, until forced to do so under FOI. This is despite a growing body of international evidence that even traffic derived pollution has profound effects on pregnancy development and outcomes. Dr. Michael Ryan’s work on this topic shows very serious effects.
The neighbouring borough of Bexley funded an investigation of the dust around its Manor Road waste site, with disturbing findings. The monitoring of the current position around the hazardous waste transfer station in Factory Lane, Croydon, needs clarifying and future lorry movements related to the SLWP need to be examined very carefully. People need to realise that every 100,000 tons of burnt /pyrolysed waste produces 30-40,000 tons of very hazardous dioxin and heavy metal filled ash/char. The same cargo as went through Corby. Arguing about chimney emissions is one thing, ignoring the VERY SERIOUS RESIDUE issues is another.

Radioactive Waste Incineration

The problem is that radiation risk science is in a class of its own because the nuclear industry is fundamentally a state enterprise. It's been partly privatised but the world powers made it inalienably a matter of national policy from 1942 onwards. Just think of the asbestos analogy. If firms were putting asbestos-contaminated material into incinerators on the reasoning that dilution and dispersion were acceptable risk reduction techniques they'd be shut down immediately. But asbestos never, in anyone's mind, stood between the west and the red menace. The radiation risk model chosen by the government deliberately avoids a real study of the effects of any internal radioactive dose, particularly from the family of alpha-particle emitters (remember the Russian journalist).There is a pretence that the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only affected by the Gamma radiation of the explosion(the Saharan sun) and not by eating ,drinking and breathing in the radioactive dusts (the Saharan sand).To help matters along the relevant data for the first 5 years (1945-1950) were removed and Japanese research halted. Japan was, after all, under American military occupation. Many scientists lost their careers in the arguments over these issues, and Professor Rotblatt, a member of the Manhattan project, who won a Nobel peace prize for his work to stop atmospheric testing, saw the two issues of data withholding and alpha emitter exclusion as fatal flaws in our current safety standards.
So the present and future of emissions policy is inextricably bound up with governments' avoidance of liability for past errors and they'll continue with their denials until they are put into court, the science tested in a forum which absolutely requires balance, and the decision won.
Such a tactic would involve a legal challenge to the authorization of a particular incinerator to burn radioactively contaminated material, a crucial consideration would be that the incineration involved elements of high atomic number.
These issues may appear irrelevant to people not into what the government loves to call “low-level radioactivity”. Interested readers should log into the LLRC website and follow their noses…..an inventor of the atom bomb, inspector of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, witness to the Pacific UK, Australian ,NZ and USA servicemen’s exposures and active teacher and campaigner was there before them, but only the very restricted audience at London hospitals were privileged to hear.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING COMMISSION

In the biggest shake-up of the planning system for more than 60 years, energy companies and developers are fine-tuning proposals that will test the government's resolve to fast-track schemes considered vital for the national interest.
This week, Gordon Brown maintained that the new regime would "speed up decisions ... for the national infrastructure" in advance of a statement today from energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, pushing the case for more wind farms.
While much of the present planning system will remain in place, the new regime will remove decisions on big, strategic infrastructure projects - airport runways, major road schemes and new rail lines, as well as power stations, wind farms, waste disposal schemes and new water projects

Decisions will be taken from local councils and handed to the non-elected IPC.Its head, (ex-chief exec Kent County Council) Pitt replies: "My best estimate is that we will be dealing with a significant number of applications by late spring [2010], and that a substantial amount of groundwork will have been done by both the applicants and other organisations."

See John Vidal's article in the Guardian,WED 15th JULY

BIOCHAR

BIOCHAR pyrolysate, new gold?..........or same old, same old….

I went to the LAEC energy from waste committee today, where there was a real buzz in the air, and a hard sell for a new unheard of waste treatment method that had even been cleared by Ireland for dealing with BSE cattle!...errrrr?

Some members of the committee even thought it would be better than the old coal via coke to gas system (the “old” pyrolysis) because it was “ new technology”. So where had all the heavy metals in the sewage disappeared to I asked myself….it seemed too much of a free lunch to me…so I asked around.


“If you were pyrolysing waste materials, then I think you are right in assuming you will get a waste product at the end of the process. This could be contaminated with dioxins, PCBS, PAHs, etc. The Env. Agency would regulate as a waste, so you would need to demonstrate safety before you could apply to agricultural soils (or elsewhere I guess).”

From a leading expert in Biochar research

“4) What other impacts need to be considered?Pyrolysis can result in air pollution and particulate emissions known to have serious impacts on human health. As with conventional incineration, toxins contained within feedstocks are emitted into the air or retained in ash or and charcoal Some biochar companies are already using a wide variety of “wastes” which can include treated wood, crop residues that have been sprayed with agrichemicals, plastics, used tyres or coal mixed with other biomass. The impact of adding large quantities of potentially toxin-laden charcoal into soils must be assessed, along with air emissions from pyrolysis.”

From carbontradewatch.org

So if some bright spark suggests a new miracle cure for dried sewage sludge, or rubber tyres, I’d take it with a pinch of salt, if I were you.

RADIOACTIVE and HAZARDOUS

RADIOACTIVITY AND HAZARDOUS WASTE….. “ paint-pots and plutonium rods”… it ain’t.

The new economics of landfill tax for commercial and industrial waste, twice the volume of municipal, mean its too expensive to go to landfill,and so its coming to an incinerator near you.Now local areas will deal with local waste streams,whatever they are (central government presumption).

Rubber tyres, tarmac, contaminated earth from Victorian sites, asbestos demolition waste, car oils, industrial lubricants, waste, such as contaminated wood, glass and plastic . Electronic waste, such as fluorescent tubes, computer monitors and televisions, batteries (full of toxic heavy metals).Industrial waste, such as solvent, paint, varnish, oils, cleaning cloths, filters and soiled protective clothing .Residue from other waste treatments, such as ash from incinerators.
Agricultural pesticides and BSE contaminated cattle
In the UK, almost all radioactive waste comes from the nuclear power industry.
2% comes from defence uses (nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered submarines).
1% comes from medical and industrial uses of radioactive substances.

This is an example of the regulation

Special Form Certificate


Special form material means either:

- An indispersible solid radioactive material;
- A sealed capsule containing radioactive material that shall be so manufactured that it can be opened only by
destroying the capsule.


This means that if you have radioactive material which has a current Special Form certificate the packaging requirements
for transport are less onerous, often enabling a less expensive and more readily available transport package to be used.


If the material is no longer Special Form it may mean that “Type B” container is required which can in turn lead to a more complicated operation.


What is Best Practicable Means?


The Environment Agency requires users
of radioactive materials to demonstrate pro-actively that they are using the
Best Practicable Means to minimise the accumulation of radioactive waste and
to minimise the discharge of that waste to the environment, before users are
granted authorisations to accumulate and dispose of radioactive waste. There
is no definitive definition of BPM as each user's situation will be different.


What do we mean by 'Waste'?


Radioactive material has a wide range of
applications such as in Medicine to diagnose and treat patients, in Universities
and Research Companies for research and in Industry for supporting operational
processes.
Where waste radioactive material is secured within robust physical
containment, it's classed as a 'waste closed source'; if not, it is more generally
called 'radioactive waste'. The regulations governing the disposal of these
broad classes of material are different.


What do we mean by 'Closed Sources'?


Radioactive closed sources have
a wide range of applications such as in Medicine to diagnose and treat patients
and in Industry where they are found in instruments and gauges that determine
levels, volumes and thickness.
Where waste radioactive material is secured within
robust physical containment, it's classed as a 'waste closed source'; if not,
it is more generally called 'radioactive waste'. The regulations governing
the disposal of these broad classes of material are different.

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There is a real issue about “lost” closed sources, enough to give rise to European concern and regulation! Which is a comfort.