| space Press Releases, News Stories |
|
Greenpeace Press Release BANGKOK, Thailand, 24 May 2000 -- The environmental group Greenpeace today assailed an American environmental technology exchange program for actively promoting incinerators in Southeast Asia despite the recent release of a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which directly links emissions from such incinerators with cancer. Greenpeace Southeast Asia criticized the US Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), a program of the USAID ( US Agency for International Development) for promoting the spread of dirty and deadly technologies in Thailand and Vietnam. Earlier this month, the US-AEP together with experts from the EPA conducted workshops in Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh which frontloaded the use of incinerators for the treatment and disposal of waste from hospitals. The trainings were attended by representatives from government agencies and various hospitals in both countries. “Medical and municipal waste incinerators are known to be major sources of dioxin emissions to the environment. Given the new dioxin findings, recent attempts by the US to peddle their cancer factories here in Thailand and Southeast Asia should be condemned and rejected without reservation,” according to Tara Buakamsri, toxics campaigner for the Bangkok-based Greenpeace Southeast Asia. Last week, the Washington Post leaked a report from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which revealed that dioxin is ten times more toxic than was previously recognized, and in certain populations can cause one cancer for every hundred persons . The same report also concludes for the first time that dioxin causes cancer in humans. Dioxins are also linked to a wide array of health problems including changes in hormone levels and developmental defects of babies. “This shocking information about dioxins should force our government officials to abandon their fatal obsession with incineration. Despite the availability of cheaper, safer and more sustainable options for dealing with waste, the government is still captivated by the false solutions offered by incineration. This is totally irrational,” added Buakamsri. The EPA findings solidify dioxin's status as one of the most potent chemical toxins known to science. They findings also suggest that dioxin already contributes to a significant number of cancer deaths each year. Extrapolating from the EPA's risk findings, environmentalists have estimated that about 100 of the roughly 1,400 cancer deaths occurring daily in the United States can be attributed to dioxin exposure. “It has become ironic that the solutions now being exported to us by industrialized countries like the US and Japan, have themselves become the problem,” stressed Buakamsri. Greenpeace is calling for an immediate halt to all plans to build incinerators in Thailand and in the other Southeast Asian countries. ---------- FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Basel Action Network is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a `fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond `fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. More News |