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HIDDEN DANGERS

Erika Yarrow considers how pollution is impacting health across the globe.

Industrialisation has left a legacy of land contamination and this has the potential to impact human health significantly if left undetected and untreated.  The Environment Agency acknowledges that there are thousands of sites in the UK where contamination has the potential to affect the wider environment.  As pressure to develop on brownfield sites has increased, the monitoring and remediation of contaminated land  has moved up the political agenda with Defra undertaking to identify the potential impact on health.  But the issue is a complex one, due to the wide variety of possible contaminants, the amounts involved and variations in the environment.

Estimates of the number of contaminated sites in the UK range from 70,000-100,000.  Friends of the Earth has identified 68 sites, in London alone, where former town gas or coal gas plants previously stood. 

The Ince Central housing estate in Wigan is one of the largest Defra-funded contaminated land projects to date. Environmental consultant, Mouchel, identified that 297 of the 327 council properties on the estate were built on soil contaminated by heavy metals, arsenic and lead. Tony Brown, Mouchel's Director of Environmental Engineering, says: 'The significance of the project meant that it received £5 million in funding for remediation, which involved excavating contaminated soil to a depth of 600 millimetres and replacing it with clean soil.' Funding was an issue that Tony discussed with Hilary Benn when he visited the site and found that it was a subject close to the minister's heart. 'Apparently, Hilary Benn's back garden had been contaminated by a neighbouring smelting works,' explains Tony.  'This forced him to take legal action to pay for its remediation.'

There are a number of well-documented cases of historic contamination impacting human health.  The Health Protection Agency studied residents living in Halton Borough, Cheshire, on an area used previously for the disposal of industrial waste, including hexachlorobutadiene (HCBD), a known carcinogen that can affect kidney function.  Residents were found to have signs of kidney distress and high levels of HCBD were found in their homes.  When removed from the area for ten months whilst remediation took place, the study found that the condition of the residents improved.

A more dramatic case of historic contamination is that of Rongelap, in the Marshal Islands.  In 1985, Greenpeace relocated all resident of Rongelap, the community having suffered for decades as the result of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific in the 1940s and 1950s.  Testing at nearby Bikini Atoll had resulted in fallout from 66 fission and hydrogen bombs.  Whilst Bikini was evacuated during the tests, Rongalap, 150 kilometres away, was not.  Of the population alive during the period of testing 95 percent had contracted thyroid cancer and a high proportion of children suffered genetic defects.

Sadly, new contaminates are being released to the environment everyday.  Friends of the Earth has found levels of industrial pollution in eastern Europe that far exceed those considered acceptable in the EU.  Even in the UK industrial pollution is still reaching worrying levels.  Analysis of the Government's Pollution Inventory found that 14,000 tonnes of carcinogens are being released into the air every year and 700,000 tonnes of hazardous waste are produced. Since China banned its import in 2002, India has become a dumping ground for electronic waste and crude handling is putting the environment and the health of workers in the recycling industry at risk.

And it doesn't end there.  Greenpeace is concerned about the impact of industrial waste on the oceans.  It believes that 44 percent of pollutants found in the sea originate from the land. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have the ability to migrate considerable distances and are frequently deposited in cold regions.  As a result the Innuit population in the Arctic is believed to be the most heavily contaminated in the world.

It is clear that pollution impacts directly on the health of communities, yet there seems to be little collaboration between environmental and health agencies - internationally.  Until pollution is taken more seriously, particularly in the developing world, lives will continue to be lost needlessly.  That evidence of industrial pollution can be found in some of the most remote regions of the world is a damning indictment of mankind's relationship with the planet.