Wednesday 1 April 2009

How the Czechs handle mercury poisoning, Leader Carter

An extract from the UN report on mercury poisoning:

In 2004 the Czech State Health Institute analyzed the mercury content of the blood, hair and urine in residents of the community. Blood mercury concentrations in residents living near the Spolana chloralkali plant were twice as great as levels in a control group and in the rest of the Czech Republic population. The symptoms most frequently identified were all related to the nervous system, typical of mercury exposure (Kuncová, 2004b).

An Environmental Impact Assessment for Spolana and a decontamination process were prepared and agreed upon in 2004. The clean-up method will include encapsulating the mercury, demolishing the buildings, and removing the surface layer of soil. The waste will go to a thermal desorption process to remove mercury and then the clean waste will go to the landfill. The costs are estimated to reach more than $US 20 million.

Several weeks later, KCC aren't sure where the factory is.

The EA say there's definitely no hazard to health - but can't produice the clean-up reports.

TDC and Laura Sandys are silent.

Roger Gale and Steve Ladyman - even wth the Thor fire - say it's our fault for pouring paint down the sink.

Infratil drain aviation fuel and kerosene into the water table and sea.

Serciol lost 4,000 oil drums worth of solvent into the water table. To put that in context the whole of the USA in 2004 has had less pollution spills than that.

Is there a culture of deceit and incompentence at KCC and TDC where public safety is concerned?

Surely no public authority in the UK would allow expansion of an aiprot built on the drinking water, a mercury plant to close for 20 years but not close,and massive pollution dumping on a scal that is an international scandal.

Surely Leader Carter needs to take a firm grip on Thanet.

Still silence on Richboro pwer station built to a 1950's specification with brown asbestos and derelict for 30 years. Presumably it will be remediated as it falls onto the main road and into the UNESCO Bay.

No news from the Gang of Four, nor our MP's, on the Infratil missing noise and air monitors.

As MP I will of course be calling for a Parliamentary Inquiry with views on funding and salaries and pensions.

It may be too late by then for some people though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The amount of cyclohexanone drawn back by pumps for remediation was 470 tonnes in the first 12 years of the supervised remediation project.

This solvent is soluble in water Tim.

The only way to really know how much went preferentially through chalk fissures to aquifer, for the thirty years of the leak whilst Rumfields extraction was running, would be for Sericol to carry out a production requirements calculation (the amounts used for production after the faulty pipe was replaced in 93 .. the leak had been undetected for thirty years before that)

Then Sericol would have to produce to EA the total amount of cyclohexanone delivered to site since they set up at Poorhole Lane until thirty years later the leak was discovered and Rumfields switched off.

And I think you would find that 470 tonnes is not even a half of what went into aquifer.

Then what was the consumption of water. What would the solvent dilutions have been. Was the cumulative dose sufficient to irreversibly block oestregen receptors, cause Thanet's allegedly high rate of ectopic pregnancy, aneurism in young adults, endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome and candida infections ?

This requires expert epidemiological study.

It requires Sericol to act responsibly and cooperate with such a study and blinking pay for it !