By Anthony O. Miller
THE GOVERNMENT is taking the Ergates foundry of Marios & Eleni to court for allegedly spewing more pollution into the air than is allowed by law, top ministry officials said yesterday.
Ergates villagers have blamed the foundry for rates of cancer of the brain, kidney and pancreas, leukaemia and lung diseases that far exceed the Cyprus average. A full 33 per cent of Ergates’ children have chronic smoke-related lung problems.
Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas asked Attorney-general Alecos Markides “to prepare all the papers to take the company to court for disobeying the (pollution) limits that we set,” a top Labour Ministry official said, requesting anonymity.
“As the Ministry of Labour, I think we have done the right thing,” the official told the Cyprus Mail. “We took emissions measurements five times. We got averages. We saw (the air pollution) content was high. We informed the Parliament immediately. We contacted the Attorney-general, and we are proceeding” to go to court, he said.
Moushiouttas has also asked Markides to obtain a court order closing the foundry until the court renders its judgment in the case, the Labour official said, adding: “The law permits us to do that.”
The closure order could affect either the foundry itself, or other aspects of the Marios & Eleni operation on the site, or both, the official said. “Maybe we will conclude that it is only the foundry that needs to stop, so if they have other work to do there, they can do it,” he explained.
A guilty verdict could cost the foundry’s owners “up to £20,000 in fines and either one or two years imprisonment,” the Labour Ministry source said.
Studies have shown the foundry’s smoke contains the neuro-toxic heavy-metals lead and cadmium. And one anonymous Health Ministry doctor claims the foundry’s smoke has saturated Ergates with lethal dioxin, the deadliest chemical compound known.
The government ordered the foundry to reduce its air pollution to 300 milligrams per cubic metre of emissions, after tests showed it was spewing 1,000mg per cubic metre into the air — 20 times the accepted European Union level. The current level required by Cyprus law is only six times the EU-accepted figure.
However, recent tests showed the foundry has been disgorging some 800mg of pollutants per cubic metre into the Ergates air, prompting the government to act, the Labour Ministry official said.
According to a study by Dr Michalis Voniatis, commissioned by Ergates villagers, 33 per cent of their children suffer from chronic breathing problems associated with the Marios & Eleni Foundry’s smoke.
Voniatis also blamed foundry smoke for a rate of brain, kidney and pancreas cancer nearly three times the national average; a lung cancer rate 50 per cent above the Cyprus average; and a leukaemia rate twice the national average.
Parallel to prosecuting the foundry, the Labour Ministry is also “analysing the particulate for lead and cadmium. We sent the samples to the government laboratories for analysis, and we should know by Monday or Tuesday what levels of these two dangerous elements are in the smoke, including dioxin,” the Labour Ministry official said.
“Apparently they have decided that enough is enough,” Health Minister Frixos Savvides said of the Labour Ministry decision to sue the foundry.
And he noted that, “if there is the slightest suspicion of any harm to the community_ then the decision the decision to close the foundry (permanently) is absolutely within our authority.”
Savvides said “there could be a possibility” that the diseases documented by Dr Voniatis were related to the foundry smoke, “but it’s not yet certain”.
“In any case, the correlation between the unfortunate results (of Voniatis’ study) and the problem with the foundry is something that will be studied over a very long-term period,” Savvides said.
