Unsafe disposal of toxic wastes 463
Unsafe Disposal of Toxic Wastes
Companies that do not use clean production methods often produce a lot of
toxic wastes. For some industries, like the chemical industry and the mining
and oil industries, toxic waste may be their biggest product!
Because toxic wastes can be extremely costly and difficult to dispose of
safely, dangerous dumping of wastes is common. And not surprisingly, the
dumping usually adds yet another source of illness to the burden of health
problems faced by people in poor communities.
More and more businesses are being organized to keep toxic products out
of the waste by recycling some or all of their parts. But even environmentally
friendly activities such as recycling must be done carefully to prevent toxic
materials from harming workers and the environment.
Making sure industries dispose of wastes responsibly is only one part of
the solution. To truly end the problem of toxic waste, we must change the way
industry works. The only safe way to dispose of toxic waste is to stop creating
it in the first place.
The Africa Stockpiles Programme
Corporations and development agencies have promoted pesticides to farmers
for decades as part of a solution to hunger. But many scientists and farmers
now recognize that pesticides create more problems than they solve. Who will
dispose of these deadly chemicals? How can it be done safely?
In countries across Africa, more than 50,000 tons of unused and unwanted
pesticides and other toxic wastes are stored in leaking containers. To clean
up these toxics and to prevent the dumping of more poisons, a group of
government agencies and international organizations formed the Africa
Stockpiles Programme (ASP).
The groups in the ASP have different ideas about how to clean up the
waste. Some say the easiest and cheapest way is to burn it. The World Bank
and several governments are building incinerators to do this. Other groups in
the ASP say burning these wastes would release more poisons into the air and
water, and suggest safer disposal methods. As of now, there are no truly safe
ways to destroy these chemicals. Developing safer methods will be
costlier than burning and will take time.
As the ASP works to solve this problem,
toxic wastes blow in the wind and leak into
groundwater. These poisons and the sicknesses
they cause are part of the deadly legacy of the
chemical companies and development agencies
that made them and promoted their use.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012