space Press Releases, News Stories

By Robin Newbold, Asia Times

2000, the Philippine economy faces three structural challenges required to achieve sustained growth: poverty reduction, proper environmental management, and adequate infrastructure. Though there have been recent efforts to solve the Philippines' pressing problem of hazardous waste disposal.

The Global Environment Facility, under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program, has approved the setting up of environmentally safe non-incineration technologies to destroy stockpiles of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the country. Toxic waste has amassed in the Philippines due to the inability of industry to destroy persistent organic pollutants (POPs) generated, and the failure of the United States to effectively manage the problem when its troops were based in the country.

There is now growing international concern over these and other highly toxic POPs. Approval of the Philippine project is timely, coming just weeks before the adoption of a global treaty to eliminate harmful POPs. The Philippines, which has been an active participant in the treaty negotiations, is expected to sign the pact when member countries meet in Stockholm later this month.

The international environmental group Greenpeace hailed this development as a "significant breakthrough in the country's efforts to introduce safe and environmentally sound technological alternatives to the incineration of stockpiles of PCBs and other POPs".

"There is general agreement among experts that enough scientific knowledge exists on the adverse human health and environmental impacts of POPs to warrant immediate national, regional and international action, including bans and phase-outs. Work has started among nations to develop legally binding agreements to ban or restrict the production, distribution and use of POPs," says the UN.

The hazards associated with POPs have been known for years and the knowledge of the extent of harm they cause has increased, according to the UN they are "highly toxic, remain in the environment for long periods, become more concentrated as they go up the food chain, and can spread thousands of kilometers from the point of emission. The weight of scientific evidence strongly suggests that overexposure to certain POPs can cause serious immune and metabolic effect, neurologic defects, reproductive anomalies, cancer and other abnormalities in both humans and animals."

PCBs are equally toxic, a group of synthetic organic chemicals that "contain 209 individual compounds with varying chemical contents and pattern of chlorine substitution", according to Greenpeace. Exposure to PCBs in high concentrations can have various acute effects according to research by the international environment group "including: a skin disease known as chloracne; liver damage including clinical hepatitis; and clinically diagnosable damage to the nervous system with symptoms such as numbness and tingling in the arms and legs".

Incinerators, including state-of-the-art varieties, have been pinpointed as major sources of the ultra-toxic and cancer-causing dioxins, another group of POPs being targeted for elimination by the global treaty. The Philippines and Slovakia were chosen as the pilot sites for the global project because of their huge stockpiles of the cancer-causing PCBs, one of the deadliest POPs being targeted for elimination worldwide. The Philippines also had the advantage over other countries of being the first in the world to ban waste incineration.

"The approval of this project sends a very strong message that there are safe alternatives to the incineration of POPs stockpiles. While the real solution lies in clean production, existing stockpiles of POPs wastes need to be dealt with in a manner that does not produce even more toxic pollution," said Francis de la Cruz, Toxics Campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Besides demonstrating the viability of non-combustion technologies to destroy and clean up stockpiles of PCBs and other POPs, the project also aims to break traditional economic and regulatory barriers to the adoption by developing countries of newer and safer alternatives to waste combustion. The project will also seek to demonstrate full and effective civil society participation at all project levels.

"The most exciting part of the project is its commitment to harness the energy of community-based organizations and other stakeholders in the project implementation, on top of the capacity building objectives that may result from the transfer of technology. We hope to draw lessons from this project that will be broadly applicable on a global scale for countries with developing economies and economies in transition," de la Cruz said.

The Philippines has no facility that is appropriate for use in the destruction of POPs stockpiles, particularly PCB containing stocks and wastes. Electricity generating and power distributing agencies in the country are stuck with the problem of disposing stocks of PCBs used in old generation transformers and capacitors. Strapped for funds and lacking in technical capacity to safely deal with the problem, these power generating entities store their old transformers together with their PCB waste in haphazard and unsatisfactory conditions posing serious health risks to workers and communities.

The former US military bases in the Philippines have also left their own poisonous legacy and are a main contributor to the high level of POPs and PCBs still polluting the environment. After the Philippine Senate refused to extend the RP-US Bases Treaty in 1991, American forces had to withdraw. But when the last troops left Clark and Subic "it soon became apparent that they also left behind a lethal legacy of toxic wastes brought about by irresponsible use, storage and disposal of hazardous materials including POPs, PCBs and organochlorine pesticides", says Greenpeace. Indeed, a January 1992 report by the US General Accounting Office revealed that the US military had failed to comply with its own environmental standards in its bases in the Philippines.

More recently, the Philippine government which has undertaken extensive efforts to convert the former bases into flagship economic centers, commissioned environmental baseline studies in Clark and Subic to assess the actual extent of contamination. The Clark study, conducted by Weston International, found, among other things, that: * high levels of the persistent toxic pesticide dieldrin in four operational wells and six back-up wells inside Clark, fueling fears that the underground aquifers that supply drinking water in and around the base are contaminated.

The wells are all located near or down-gradient of the golf course. The dieldrin found in the wells may be the breakdown product of aldrin, a pesticide which may have been used in the golf course; * high levels of aldrin, dieldrin, lindane, chlordane, and heptachlor were also found in the soil samples from several sites, and; * elevated levels of PCB in soil were detected in the decommissioned power plant and transformer sites.

While the Philippine government supports environmental efforts and has made important strides in fostering cooperation between industry and government to improve environmental performance, there is still clearly a long way to go. "The government has not committed significant resources to the task, and the regulatory and environmental management agencies remain weak," according to the US Agency for International Development.