By Martin Hellicar
EVERY year, thousands of tonnes of hazardous toxic waste are being dumped in unsuitable landfill sites with nothing to stop them seeping out to pollute groundwater, a government official has admitted.
The careless disposal of noxious waste from hospitals and clinics, laboratories, and paint and chemicals factories also pollutes the soil and atmosphere, Costas Papastavros, of the Agriculture Ministry’s environment service, told The Sunday Mail. He said this state of affairs posed a serious risk to human health.
“One of the most serious unsolved environmental problems we have is that of dangerous and toxic chemicals,” the environmental expert said.
But industrialists said the situation, at least as far as factories were concerned, was not as bad as Papastavros maintained. Local greens, for their part, shared Papastavros’s gloomy appraisal of the situation, adding that pollution from toxic waste could cause cancers, damage to the immune system, and infertility.
Papastavros acknowledged that industry was not the main culprit, but said the problem was very real: “Even if we do not really have heavy industry in Cyprus we do have toxic waste generated from various sources which requires proper management.”
“It’s a bloody big problem,” was Papastavros’s appraisal of the situation as a whole.
He could not put an exact figure on the amount of such waste produced every year on the island, but said it came to “thousands of tonnes”.
“If this waste is not properly disposed of, we have problems with pollution of ground water, atmosphere and soil and health problems,” the government scientist said. “If, for example, waste is incinerated without proper checks, then you have serious atmospheric pollution.”
“At the moment, the situation is totally unmanaged,” he warned.
Though detailed studies have not been carried out, heavy metals and carcinogenic substances are thought to be among the cocktail of hazardous wastes being allowed to contaminate our air, water and soil.
Most hazardous waste ends up in landfills, along with municipal waste. Such landfills are not sealed, so toxins can seep into the ground to pollute groundwater, surface waters and soils. Nor is there any control of atmospheric emissions from such dumps, so volatile toxins are released freely.
Papastavros also spoke of widespread “illegal dumping”.
He said the Agriculture Ministry was now, belatedly, beginning to draw up plans for the proper management and disposal of such dangerous waste.
“We’re having various discussions, on various proposals, but we’re only just starting,” he said. “It should have been done long ago, like so many other (environmental) things…” he added.
Cyprus will have to tighten up procedures for disposal of such waste if it is to meet requirements for entry to the European Union.
And it won’t come cheap. The cost of implementing a proper management plan for toxic waste disposal, Papastavros estimated, would be “millions of pounds”.
But the scientist said people had to get used to the idea that a pollution- free environment was not something that could be enjoyed for free.
“If Cypriots think the only thing they have to pay for is tavernas, then they should think again,” he said.
Commenting on the expert’s appraisal of the toxic waste situation, a spokesman for the Federation of Employers and Industrialists (Oev) told The Sunday Mail that toxic waste from industry was “basically not a big problem”.
The practice of disposing of waste oil down soak-aways had been stopped and a disposal site for toxic wastes had been set up by the government at Vathia Gonia, he said.
But Friends of the Earth (FoE) Cyprus said waste was an environmental problem that was often overlooked.
“Because we don’t see all the waste produced on our behalf, it’s easy not to think about it,” FoE said in a statement.
The landfill sites that receive most toxic waste in Cyprus is a bête noire for FoE.
“Landfills are the most popular form of disposal because they are cheap. Many landfills contain a lot of liquid because rain enters from the top and because some of the buried waste contains liquid. This liquid reacts with substances in the landfill to generate a toxic fluid called leachate, which can sometimes leak out of the landfill and cause pollution of underground water bodies,” FoE said.
“When leachate contaminates groundwater, the damage is often irreversible.”
The commonplace practice of burning rubbish on landfills creates additional pollution hazards, FoE said. “Smoke and gases emitted when waste is burned can contain pollutants such as dioxins, which even at very low levels may cause harm to the environment and human health.”
The possible health effects of toxic waste contamination were spelled out by FoE: “Hundreds of chlorine-based poisons are building up all over the world in the water, the air, the food chain – therefore in our bodies. The resulting health problems in people and wildlife include infertility, impaired development, immune system damage and cancer.”
FoE said disposal of toxic waste was part of a wider waste management problem. “The responsibility of all governments is to ensure that laws exist which promote the recycling and neutralisation of toxic waste, as well as the use of non-toxic production methods,” the green group stated.
Cyprus has one of the highest per capita waste production rates in Europe.
