Do you believe that continuous exposure to CO-INCINERATING cement plant emissions, and increased inhalation of PM2.5 truly IMPROVES THE HEALTH of Rugby residents?
What is the HPA's recommended daily dose of toxins for a healthier Rugby population?
THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGICAL MEDICINE
Strenuously rebuts the claims made by the government's Health Protection Agency regarding the cancers and HEALTH IMPACT OF Incineration and Co-incineration.
The BSEM see this:
While The HEALTH PROTECTION AGENCY sees, through its rose-tinted spectacles, a cement plant that smells ONLY of roses - blooming marvellous!
The BSEM full report, and "war of words" with the Health Protection Agency, can be seen at the link below.
SUMMARY:
Research studies are revealing toxicity at progressively lower exposures for many toxic substances, and the Regulators have consistently and repeatedly underestimated the risk of pollutants: asbestos, lead, DDT, PCBs, dioxins, CFCs, cigarette smoke, etc. Often it has taken decades for regulators to acknowledge these risks and to ban them. It is disappointing that the Health Protection Agency have not grasped these points but this is not surprising as regulators and government bodies have rarely been correct about the risks from chemical pollution in the past and have only acted after considerable harm has been done. The role of the BSEM is different, however, and is to look at emerging evidence and to warn about these dangers long before this point occurs. This they believe they have done in the report.
Why does the HPA favour a method of waste disposal which has the greatest health costs, that gives the least amount of energy (after landfill) and produces potentially the most health risks? Recent evidence has shown alarming evidence of body burdens of chemical contamination in the general population, and that newborns are being born with their bodies already polluted. Present regulations fail to protect the public from toxic exposure.
1. Incineration and co-incineration discourage recycling, and encourages move to lowest priorities.
2. Serious inadequacies in the present monitoring system.
3. Very few pollutants are monitored, and no one has any idea of the concentrations.
4. Sampling is for a few hours twice a year, with plenty of "advance warning".
5. Dioxins when "spot monitored" revealed an underestimation by as much as 30-50 times.
6. PM2.5 is not monitored at all, but has strong association with heart attacks, and lung cancer.
7. Schwartz: "The magnitude of the association between fine particulates and mortality suggests that controlling fine particulates would result in saving thousands of lives each year."
8. Pollution offences have been found to be widespread and prosecution virtually non-existent.
9. HPA claims of "provides strict operating conditions and robust monitoring programmes" are meaningless spin.
10. Lack of regulation of fly ash and by pass dust.
11. Contravention of the Stockholm Convention - NOT to create large quantities of dioxins and furans!
12. Majority of studies round incinerators have shown excesses of cancer.
13. Why are incinerators being built without any studies being performed in the UK to monitor health effects round existing incinerator and co-incinerating cement plants?
14. HPA organised a conference on "health inequalities", but failed to comment on the callous policy of building incinerators in deprived areas of high mortality where the health effects are likely to be greatest. (See Rugby).
15. Incinerators and cement plants have different emission limits, and cement kilns can emit 30 times greater amount of particulates than an incinerator.
16. HPA claims burning waste in cement kilns reduces emissions, but fails to mention the increases from burning such like as tyres and petcoke: vanadium, zinc, nickel.
17. HPA will not assess the impact on health of any cement/co-incinerator/incinerator plant, despite the House of Commons Select Committee ruling that these studies should be carried out BEFORE permitting any more waste to be burnt in cement kilns.
18. Arsenic and mercury are emitted and are uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
19. The Royal Society said of the Defra Report into incineration and co-incineration: "that it gives an apparently reassuring impact of waste management options when in fact it does not present a complete or sufficiently critical summary of the evidence."
CONCLUSION:
The BSEM stands by all the conclusions in its report and believes a policy of building more incinerators and cement kilns will mean many more lives will be lost unnecessarily from cancer, including those of children, more people will die prematurely of heart disease, there will be an increase in birth defects and health costs will increase. This would be a retrograde step for a civilised society as there are far better ways fo dealing with waste and these methods would be CHEAPER, would be SAFER and would produce more ENERGY!"
See link to full report. www.ecomed.org.uk
Who do you believe?
The rose tinted spectacles of the government's protection agency, or the honest and full appraisal by the BSEM that has "NO vested interest" and only has only public's good at heart?
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