India becoming world's toxic trash bin
Rich countries export plastic bags and bottles, used car batteries and even N-waste
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AP
GHAZIABAD (India) — Toxic fumes rose into Many Rain’s face as his acetylene torch cut into a car battery. In a few seconds, the teenager split open the casing and pulled out the lead plates with hands mottled by acid burns.
Wearing no mask or protective clothing, he risked brain damage from the fumes and serious injury from the battery acid.
Yet, alongside four other boys, he works up 10 hours a day breaking open old batteries shipped mostly from Australia.
They need the work, however awful the job. And highly developed "First World" nations are glad to give it to them.
Instead, of reprocessing their own waste, many companies ship it here, where environmental standards are lower and enforcement is lax.
Environmentalists say India and other South Asia countries are becoming the world’s dumping ground for toxic waste.
Plastic bags and bottles, used car batteries, lead, cadmium, metal scrap and even radioactive waste come from the United States, Germany, Britain and Canada.
"In the United States, supermarkets tell customers that the soda bottles will be recycled.
"But they don’t tell them that the bottles are being exported to poor countries with rotten work-safety and environmental regulations," said Ms Ann Leonard of Greenpeace, the worldwide environmental group. For India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, hazardous waste is a much-needed source of revenue.
"Just by closing down these factories, we can’t say the problem is solved," said Indian Environment Minister Kamal Nath.
"There’s the question of demand and employment. We must integrate these concerns while banning the import of these things," he said In an Interview.
He said the Import of toxic waste, like batteries, was allowed so long as they were recycled safely, but admitted that enforcement was difficult.
Mr Iqbal Malik, an Indian environmentalist, saw the situation in darker shades: "The recycling is done under the most primitive conditions.
"Yet the government is not concerned because it generates jobs."
In hundreds of makeshift factories — mostly illegal — workers earn as little as 10 rupees (Singapore 45 cents) a day working under appalling conditions to melt the plastic bags for new bottles, toys, buckets and other goods.
The production of plastic emits dangerous chemicals, such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide compounds, which can cause cancer and birth defects and damage the kidneys, nervous and immune systems, and blood.
Health hazards go beyond just those who work with waste products.
Sulphuric acid from recycled batteries is dumped into gutters or rivers.
Lead-based ash from other recyclers fouls the air.
No one knows how much toxic waste reaches India, since it is usually categorised as raw material for recycling.
But a Greenpeace analysis of export documents from many countries revealed that Australia alone exported 254,000 tonnes of used batteries to India in 1993.
The United States sent nearly half its plastic-waste exports to the subcontinent. —AP.
Source : The Straits Times, 6th June 1995
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