PLANNED government probes into suspicions that residents of Ergates and Omonia have been poisoned by smoke from two foundries near their villages took centre-stage yesterday at a House Environment Committee hearing.
A Health Ministry representative told Committee Chairman Demetris Eliades it should take about six months to test the air, soil, vegetation and blood of residents of both Ergates and Omonia for smelter-smoke toxins now that the Health Ministry had found British scientific experts to do the work.
Health Minister Frixos Savvides said last week he hoped the British experts would start by April 15 laying the groundwork for testing Ergates villagers for lead, cadmium and dioxin suspected in smoke from nearby Marios & Andreas foundry.
Tests by epidemiologist Michalis Voniatis have shown cancer rates, lead and cadmium poisoning and lung diseases among Ergates residents many times the national average.
Health Ministry Public Health Physician Andreas Georgiou said that, once the contracts were officially signed and after that baseline groundwork was done, the British experts should be able to test the first Ergates villagers’ blood by mid-May.
Georgiou said the Tender Board accepted the bid by Leonidou Associates Human Resource Consultancy 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.
Savvides has pledged to embark on a similar toxin-testing program with Omonia residents outside Limassol, who for months have complained that they and their children are being sickened by smoke from nearby Nemitsas foundry – sometimes to the point of requiring treatment in hospital.
Nicosia District Officer Andreas Papapolyviou told the committee that, contrary to Council of Ministers’ expectations, the Marios & Andreas foundry’s owners had failed to come to an agreement on the amount the government would indemnify them for the time they were shut down while the testing was done.
He said they wanted £400,000 to suspend their operation, while a foundry representative said the amount was £380,000. The Marios & Andreas representative also said recent emission tests – he did not say by whom – showed smelter smoke emissions had declined following "measures" the foundry took. He did not elaborate.
Ergates residents told the committee the co-operation they had shown during the study must not be seen as tolerance of an unacceptable situation, and they further questioned how the smelter’s emissions had suddenly declined in the last two months.
Separately, Takis Nemitsas, owner of Nemitsas foundry and a former Minister of Commerce, protested at what he said was a lack of governmental policy regarding foundries and their location in residential areas.
And he told the committee his foundry’s furnaces functioned steadily under the Cypriot emissions limit of 300 mg of particulate per cubic metre of air.
The Labour Ministry has filed a criminal lawsuit against Nemitsas foundry on charges of exceeding the particulate limit.
Omonia area residents say the only way to end their smoke-caused nausea and safeguarding their children’s health is to move the Nemitsas foundry. To dramatise their point, they presented the Committee with some dust of the kind they said was emitted by the smelter each time it operates.
In a press release yesterday, they noted that during Nemitsas operations last November 11 and this March 9, students and teachers of the Eighth Elementary School, which is only 300 metres from the foundry, had to halt classes, because teachers and pupils complained of dizziness, headaches, eye irritation and nausea – which was blamed on the smelter’s smoke.
"In a nutshell," the Omonia residents said, "we believe that operating foundries in residential areas is not compatible with residents’ health, especially the children, who are more vulnerable, and so we are asking the foundry be moved from the area or its permanent closure."
For his part, Nemitsas wondered if his foundry, after taking what he said had been corrective measures might move on with its development plans, or whether the government was going to ask it to move in the future.
He said the factory was not a caravan, and added that it would cost £20 million to move it.
