space Press Releases, News Stories

by SARAH STEPHENS, Phnom Penh Post

WHO director Georg Petersen - in a Jan 19 facsimile message to the NGO Forum twice stamped "urgent" - has ordered changes that seem to be designed to distance the WHO from its own public statements that there was "no abnormal level of... mercury" found during WHO/Minimata Institute tests of water wells, and that no-one showed symptoms of mercury poisoning.

These public assurances have not been retracted. One well - the "Woodcutters' Well" in Bettrang village near the dump - was ordered closed in the WHO's Jan 11 report. However, no mention was made as to why it should have been closed - at a time when Petersen and government officials were all publicly maintaining there was no danger to people from the waste.

As of 16 January, the well was not closed. Villagers were still using the water. After its report was released, WHO/Japanese testers found that sediment in the Woodcutters' water contained elevated levels of mercury, though WHO says subsequently that those levels fall within accepted safety standards.

A foreign environmentalist now in Cambodia investigating the scandal, Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network (BAN), said Petersen admitted to him in a private conversation that the mercury waste had in fact got into the water.

Puckett said: "As soon as [Petersen] knew [about the second higher test of mercury] he should have made a new recommendation and closed off the area, put up fences and seal it off."

Petersen says all this seems to be simply due to a widespread "misunderstanding" of public WHO statements and recommendations.

He told the Post the misunderstandings may have arisen because the WHO's report "was written by the Japanese".

However, the Post has discovered that Petersen has demanded that the NGO Forum alter its report as follows:

ï* where it has written that WHO testing of urine and blood samples of nine sick dock workers was "normal", Petersen wants "WHO" to be changed to "Minimata Institute";

* that WHO assurances that "none [of the workers]... have symptoms of poisoning" be changed to "their symptoms may be caused by other contents of the waste";

ï* to delete entirely the phrase "... WHO reported that test of blood and urine of dock workers and soldiers had proven normal. WHO finally concludes that none seems to have symptoms of poisoning";

* and, similarly in the report's conclusion, to add in a sentence "[the workers'] complaints may be caused by other contents of the waste than mercury".

Puckett said the WHO was now backpedalling, but that the most important issue was that WHO was not following through its own recommendations to close the well.

The WHO and the National Institute for Minimata Disease said in a Jan 11 report that they had tested local water wells and found "no abnormal level of... mercury".

However, Petersen has admitted to both the Post and international environmentalists that he knew there was something wrong with the water in the Woodcutters' Well since his visit there Dec 25 "just from looking at it".

Local villagers have complained about the water being cloudy - something Peterson said he himself saw - since shortly after the waste was dumped in early December. Villagers who use the well everyday have complained about being sick.

Environmentalists are angry that no-one in authority - from Petersen to the Ministry of Environment (which Peterson claimed to the Post to have told of the Woodcutters' well's probable contamination) - did not make it known that:

a) the WHO/government "all-clear" was probably made too early, and;

b) the WHO/Minimata report was misleading, at best, and;

c) no-one seems to know what measures have been made to close the Woodcutter's Well - if indeed it has been closed - or if local people have been told anything other than their water is fit to drink and use.

Petersen was asked why his report maintained that Sihanoukville's water was safe when it also said that the Woodcutters' Well be closed.

He replied: "That's fairly ob-vious. [The well] was so close to the site that it was bound to have got some contaminated waste in the run-off from the site... it was very close. You could tell it was already contaminated just by looking at it."

But, he was asked, why did the WHO/Minimata report say - and public statement repeat - that Sihanoukville's water sources were free from contaminants? Petersen: "How can I say this without confusing the issue? The mercury we tested was on a very low level when we did the first test. It was the same as the other three wells we tested. Then [the reading] was not elevated.

"We re-tested the samples by dissolving sediment found in the water, rather than just testing the water itself. That was after the WHO/Minimata report was written. They then found a higher level of contamination in the Woodcutters' Well... and concluded that this had been contaminated by the surface run-off water. But still the level of mercury is below the danger level."

When asked whether he had made public this second testing, Petersen said:

"Um. No. I informed the Ministry of Environment."

Petersen confirmed to the Post that he "did not know" whether the water could be described "toxic".

"That I don't know," he said, "we are having an expert come in on Sunday [Jan 24] to assess the damage.... I personally am not capable of technically answering the question, I'm not a hydrologist."

Petersen - now in Bangkok - could not be contacted by the Post to ask why he had instructed the NGO Forum investigators to amend their report.

Environmentalists this week slammed the way the WHO had handled the waste scandal, saying it was "at best immature and at worst irresponsible".

Greenpeace activist Von Her-nandez called it "the worst case of waste dumping we have seen for a long time".

Speaking at a press conference in Phnom Penh, he said Greenpeace and the Basel Action Network had taken samples from the site to test independently for contamination.

They were deeply concerned, he said, that only heavy metals had been tested, rather than combinations of organic substances and pollutants such as cancer-causing dioxins.

Petersen maintained Jan 20 that his report had been accurate. He said he fully supported the recommendations of the two activists, but added that he felt the original WHO report had been misunderstood by the media and environmentalists. "I never said there was no health risk," he said.

Puckett said that Cambodia was an easy target for rich, developed countries, and that the case had been "sadly predictible, but surely preventable".