Korea's imported incinerator technology outdated, report says

[Neil Tangri <ntangri@essential.org>]

                    Korea's imported incinerator technology
                    outdated, report says 

                         Foreign environmental groups warned Korea that it
is in danger of becoming a
                    dumping ground for obsolete incinerator technologies
that could lead to the increase
                    of dioxin levels in the air. 

                         "As incinerators are losing its ground in
industrialized nations, incinerator
                    companies are targeting overseas markets where people
are not aware of the
                    serious health problems associated with incinerators,"
said the Multinationals
                    Resources Center (MRC) in a letter to a local consumer
group.

                         The Washington-based environmental group MRC used
Korea as an example
                    of countries that have contracted with the U.S.-based
company "AMCO" to supply
                    and install incinerator technology. In particular, the
contract mentioned refers to an
                    incineration project in Taejon, according to the letter
sent to the Citizens' Alliance
                    for Consumer Protection of Korea (CACPA).

                         The MRC also claimed in the letter that "the
building of municipal waste
                    incinerators in Asia is a clear case of double
standards in which the health of
                    Americans is protected more than the health of Asians."

                         In the U.S., municipal and medical waste
incineration has been identified as
                    among the top sources of dioxin, the most toxic
man-made chemical known, the
                    MRC claimed.

                         The suspicions raised by the MRC are backed up by
an accident in which an
                    incinerator in Nowon-gu, northern Seoul, discharged
0.114 nano grams of dioxin in
                    March, exceeding the residents-agreed amount of 0.1
nano grams. A nano gram is
                    one-billionth of a gram.

                         The Seoul city government explained that an
inadvertent cleaning of the
                    dioxin-catching facility caused the accident and there
was no problem with the
                    incinerator. But, local environmental groups continue
to raise suspicions over the
                    facility's capability of preventing high levels of
dioxins from being discharged.

                         Meanwhile, some 13,000 small-scale incinerators
across the nation are presently
                    blamed as the main culprits of dioxin emission. 

                         The small-scale incinerators, whose full capacity
of waste treatment is under
                    100kg per hour, are mostly built with 1970s'
technologies and known to discharge
                    20 to 30 times more dioxin than the large-scale ones.

                         But, as the small incinerators are currently
excluded from the list of
                    pollutant-discharging facilities, they are not properly
regulated. Moreover, some
                    critics charge that more than 90 percent of dioxin
emissions in Korea are from
                    small-scale incinerators.

                         As shown in MRC's warning, however, not only
small-scale incinerators but
                    large ones are being forced onto nation's like Korea
that are not as cautious about
                    their environmental impact, local environmental groups
claim.

                         As a small step against small scale-incinerators,
the government plans to ban the
                    installation of incinerators under the waste-treating
capacity of 25kg per hour from
                    August. It also plans to put all incinerators under its
supervision beginning October.

                         Dioxin is a known carcinogen. The World Health
Organization has determined
                    that the daily permissible level of human exposure to
the poison should be limited to
                    one to four pico grams per one kilogram of body weight
a day. A pico gram is
                    one-trillionth of a gram.

                         

                    Updated: 06/10/1999
                    by Chang Jae-soon Staff reporter 

--

Neil TANGRI