ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH: US Urged to Eliminate Dioxins

[Neil Tangri <ntangri@essential.org>]

       Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
          Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.

                      *** 02-Sep-99 ***

Title: ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH: US Urged to Eliminate Dioxins

By Danielle Knight

WASHINGTON, Sep. 2 (IPS) - Eighteen years ago David Prince had no
thoughts of leaving his home in Louisiana to travel to the UN's
European headquarters to lend his voice to demands for the phasing-
out of toxic chemicals worldwide.

But that was before government officials discovered that the
blood levels of Prince and other residents of the mainly African
American area of Mossville, Louisiana, were contaminated with a
pollutant called dioxin - two to three times higher than the
national average.

He and others now wanted the worldwide elimination of these
chemicals that have the ability to travel thousands of miles. ''We
want chemical plants to stop producing these toxins and we want
them to stop it immediately,'' Prince says.

He told reporters here that his wife has cancer and his daughter
has endometriosis, a reproductive disease some researchers believe
may be linked to exposure to dioxins.

Next week Prince will join the environmental group Greenpeace
at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland where about 100
nations will resume formal negotiations on a treaty to control a
group of toxic chemicals  known as Persistent Organic Pollutants
(POPs), which include dioxins.

Along with other POP chemicals like DDT and PCBs, dioxins break
down extremely slowly in the environment and are linked to
reproductive abnormalities, neurological defects and cancer.

Unlike the pesticide DDT, dioxins have not been produced
intentionally; but they are generated as wastes and by-products
when municipal and hazardous waste is burned or in the
manuifacture of chemicals containing chlorine, such as pesticides,
PVC (vinyl) plastics, and paper products.

The pollutants can affect other communities that need not be
similar to those in Mossville - who live close to  paper mills and
vinyl plants that produce dioxins, scientists warn.

Like other POPs, dioxins are labelled "persistent" because they
travel worldwide and accumulate in the  fatty tissue of animals
and humans.

Dioxin-contaminated food made headlines recently in Europe but
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say the US position on the
POPs treaty in relation to dioxin has been substantially weakened
by pressure from the chemical industry.

Environmental groups are worried that the US State Department,
which has not formally released its official stance on dioxins at
the Geneva negotiations, will not support any tough action to
eliminate the substances.

''The key to solving the problem of dioxin contamination should
be reduction with the aim to eliminate the substances from use and
production,'' says Jack Weinberg, a Greenpeace specialist on POPs.

He says that without calling for outright elimination, the
chemical companies will be able to still produce dioxins through
''loopholes'' and the lack of capacity for enforcement of dioxin
reduction programmes in developing nations.

''There is great pressure by chemical manufacturers to push
these materials and technologies like PVC plastics in developing
countries,'' says Weinberg, who founded the International POPs
Eliminations Network (IPEN), a coalition of NGOs.

As promoted by the United States, the proposed Geneva treaty
will not provide the framework and tools for developing countries
to avoid dioxin contamination by enforcing the reduction of the
chemicals, he says. ''Many developing countries do not have the
infrastructure to do this,'' Weinberg adds.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) subtle health
effects already may be occurring in the general population in
industrialised nations at current background levels of dioxin in
the environment.

Many indigenous communities in North America that have been
heavily contaminated by dioxins are closely watching the talks in
Geneva.

''Because dioxins build up in the food chain only working
towards the aim of total elimination of these chemicals will have
an impact,'' says Jackie Warledo of the Indigenous Environmental
Network.

Warledo says that, while dioxins and other POP chemicals can
migrate anywhere in ther world, they have a disproportionate
impact on indigenous communities - especially tribes that still
maintain subsistence culture.

''High levels of dioxin poisoning have been found in fish
populations in the traditional territories of the Yakama located
in the Northwest, in Penobscots in the state of Maine and also
among many tribes within the  Great Lakes water basin region and
villages in Alaska,'' says Warledo,  who will travel to Geneva
next week.

Low-income Black communities, like Mossville and other
populations along the Mississippi River in between Baton Rouge and
New Orleans, dubbed ''cancer alley'' by environmental activists -
have also  borne the brunt of dioxin pollution.

More than 50 paper and PVC plants and other factories are
located around Mossville, says Peter Orris, a US physician who
directs a project on POPs at the Washington-based World Federation
of Public Health Associations.

''There is no question that there is a problem of dioxin
contamination in Mossville,'' says Orris who worked with the US
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry on the health
study  conducted in the town.

As the study found high levels of dioxins and in the blood of
long-time residents of Mossville it advised public health
officials to take action to minimize further exposure.

The final word comes from David Prince: ''The US government
needs to stop its rhetoric and start listening to the people and
get these plants to stop producing dioxins.'' (END/IPS/dk/mk/99)


Origin: ROMAWAS/ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH/
                              ----

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