By Anthony O. Miller
THE PEOPLE of Ergates yesterday rebelled against government refusal to close the Marios and Andreas foundry, which, according to medical tests, has poisoned them with lead, cadmium and possibly dioxin, and threatens to give them all cancer.
Meanwhile, the doctor whose tests documented the villagers’ blood poisoning said yesterday it was urgent for the government to test the vegetables grown near Ergates, lest they contain the same noxious foundry chemicals.
Agriculture Department sources told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that one to two per cent of the leafy vegetables – coriander, spinach, lettuce, parsley and celery – grown in Cyprus came from Ergates.
Most of the Ergates vegetables are sold in Nicosia supermarkets and small stores, while some are exported, the sources said. They added that the Agriculture Department had never tested the Ergates-grown vegetables to see if they were contaminated by toxins in Marios & Andreas foundry smoke.
Meanwhile, local people yesterday stepped up their protests against the foundry pollution. Members of the Ergates Municipal Council pledged to resign over the affair, residents threatened to hand back voter-registration booklets, and children in one primary school stayed away for three hours, while 90 pupils left classes in nearby Klirou village in solidarity.
“What we’re doing today is just a warning,” Kyriacos Christodoulou, chairman of the Ergates Parents Association, said, urging the government to halt the foundry’s pollution.
“We believe that at least we’re going to get some attention,” he said, noting: “What the kids are chanting is directed at the executive, which has to take measures so that these kids will live in a healthy environment.”
“I hope the Minister of Labour understands that we can’t play with the residents’ health, and I hope the Minister of Education (Ouranios) Ioannides, who is very sensitive on these issues, tries his best to close the foundry,” Christodoulou said.
“It is unacceptable for us to have it in this community, to have triple the level of lead and five times the cadmium (as in Nicosia) in our blood, living in the countryside, where it is supposedly a cleaner environment,” he declared.
Ioannides, backing the angry residents, declared: “Our position is crystal-clear. For all cases of environmental pollution from industrial units, whether the Ergates foundry or the Nemitsas foundry (in Zakaki) or whatever else, our position is absolute: Wherever the emissions are over the limits set by the European Union, then the foundry has to close until it takes all measures necessary to keep emissions to acceptable levels. Nothing more, nothing less.”
European Union levels for foundry emissions are as low as 50 milligrams of smoke particulate per cubic metre of air around the smokestacks. The Labour Ministry has set the Cyprus limit at 300mg per cubic metre of air.
Dr Michalis Voniatis, who has documented the blood poisoning of Ergates villagers, said yesterday no one knew if, or how badly, Ergates fields and vegetables might be contaminated by the lead, cadmium and possible dioxin in the settling foundry smoke.
“We don’t have any facts. We haven’t done any tests on vegetables or on fruit produced there, so I can’t give an answer. Of course they can be done by the state laboratory, but I don’t think they’ve ever been done,” he said.
Voniatis said he urged Parliament “long ago” to require the Agriculture Department to test Ergates’ soil and vegetables for heavy-metal contamination.
Voniatis was emphatic that soil and vegetable tests were more urgently needed now than ever in Ergates, following the release of his latest test results on the heavy-metal blood poisoning of Ergates residents from the foundry.
Those test results showed Ergates villagers have five times the cadmium and 2.5 times the lead in their blood as Nicosia residents, and that 62 per cent of them already have blood-lead levels above the World Health Organisation’s critical level.
Nicos Georgiades, Environment Services Director at the Agriculture Ministry, declared it was proof of “tunnel vision” to ask if the he had ever ordered, or would ever order, tests of Ergates’ vegetables for foundry toxins.
Such inquiry, he said, was equivalent to asking “how safe is safe, how clean is clean, how possible is possible, and so-on. I cannot talk on hypotheticals,” Georgiades insisted.
He conceded that, “Yes, we intend to test (Ergates soil and vegetables) on whatever parameters are required in order to make up our minds on the potential impacts from the foundry.”
Asked if this meant “impacts” on human health, he bristled: “No. Human health is an issue entirely concerning the Ministry of Health. What we intend to do is coordinate all the agencies involved on the various issues relating to the question, and try and make up our own minds.”
Georgiades said he didn’t know when he would begin toxin tests of Ergates’ soil and vegetables.
“I cannot give you an idea. This is an issue to be considered in cooperation with other agencies_ It would be entirely irresponsible of me to commit another six or seven agencies” to an organised effort to conduct such tests, he said, adding: “We will be the lead agency” if any tests are ever conducted.
The Labour Ministry, whose brief includes industrial pollution, has filed suit against Marios & Andreas for allegedly exceeding the 300mg Cyprus emission standards. It has similarly sued the Nemitsas foundry in Zakaki on the same grounds.
