HEALTH Minister Frixos Savvides yesterday said he hoped April 15 would be the date British experts would start setting up shop to test Ergates villagers for lead, cadmium and dioxin suspected in the smoke from the nearby Marios & Andreas foundry.
Savvides said the Tender Board had accepted bids to begin work about April 15 by "a team out of Essex University (London) in collaboration with Guy’s Hospital Epidemiological Department," also of London.
"A special team will test the people. Another team will do the environment – soil, air, vegetation, the whole works," he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
"I think they said in their report it would take two months from start to finish, including the writing of the report, but I would give them three," Savvides said.
Public Health physician Dr Andreas Georgiou said the Tender Board accepted the bid by Leonidou Associates Human Resource Consultancy. "They are going to bring doctors from St. Mary’s Hospital in London – they’re the best in the world, actually – and Guy’s Hospital in London" to conduct the tests.
Georgiou said the clinical examination would be conducted by doctors from St Mary’s Hospital, and the laboratory work would be done by the Guy’s Hospital toxicology reference laboratory."
"The Tender board gave the approval on March 22, and we were informed just (yesterday) by fax officially," Georgiou said. "So we are going to proceed (to sign the contract). In my opinion, it will be done in the first fortnight of April."
Georgiou explained that "part of the team will come to Cyprus to make the first fact-finding mission, to go to Ergates to make the design of the study, and the rest will follow" to begin drawing blood and carrying out the environmental tests.
Asked when the first blood samples would actually be drawn from Ergates residents, Georgiou replied: "between the beginning to the 20th of May we will have the first blood, because it’s a matter of designing the study first."
Savvides said the teams would also inspect the foundry to determine how to make its operation safer.
"They will do measurements of the filters, of the process of filtering the smoke. They will identify the present situation and they will also comment on the proposed improvements" the foundry must make, Savvides said.
Savvides last year pledged to establish a mechanism for the government, the foundry and anyone found to have suffered health effects from its smoke to be compensated.
But for the time being, he said, "this is something else… It’s a very, very big subject. I hope we don’t have – not for the monetary reasons, but for other reasons – I hope that we don’t have a serious problem" with injuries to human health.
He also pledged, once the Ergates testing program got underway, to look to beginning similar tests in the Zakaki area, where residents complain of being sickened by smoke from the nearby Nemitsas Foundry.
Yesterday Savvides reiterated this pledge, noting he had accumulated lists of several respected international laboratories interested in tendering to test Zakaki area residents.
Savvides said the winning Ergates tender came in "a little bit under" the £144,000 the Council of Ministers approved to spend on the tests.
Two series of tests done by epidemiologist and public health physician Dr Michalis Voniatis showed Ergates residents have five times the cadmium and nearly three times the lead in their blood as Nicosia residents do.
Voniatis’ tests also show Ergates residents have brain, kidney, pancreas and lung cancer rates many times the Cyprus average, and twice the Cyprus rate of leukaemia. And he blames the foundry smoke for giving 33 per cent of Ergates children chronic lung problems.
Voniatis and other doctors also suspect dioxin is in the villagers’ blood – and in the vegetables grown around the village – from the toxic emissions in the foundry smoke. These vegetables are both eaten in Cyprus and exported to Europe.
Savvides has pledged that, if his experts conclusively prove damage to human health caused by toxins in the smoke of either the Marios & Andreas or the Nemitsas foundry, he will close them down.
