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Exporting an Epidemic: A Global Asbestos Crisis
Written By mediavigil on Monday, July 26, 2010 | 10:36 AM
Note:All the schools, colleges and universities besides hospitals including medical colleges are laden with asbestos despite the fact that people exposed to asbestos are prone to breathe in tiny asbestos fibres released into the air, which gets trapped in the lungs and cause inflammation and breathing problems. Exposure to asbestos may increase the risk of lung cancer, gastrointestinal and colorectal cancer and sometimes throat, kidney, oesophagus and gallbladder cancer.
The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 introduced by the INC Member of Parliament from Maharashtra, Shri Vijay Jawaharlal Darda, in the Rajya Sabha on 31 July 2009 captures clearly the global stand on this issue:
The white asbestos is highly carcinogenic even the World Health Organisation has reported that it causes cancer. It is a rare fibrous material that is used to make rooftops and brake linings. More than fifty countries have already banned the use and import of white asbestos. Even the countries that export it to India prefer not to use it domestically. But in our country, it is imported without any restriction. Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported almost Ninety five percent of the white asbestos it mined and out of it forty-three percent was shipped to India. It is quite surprising that our country is openly importing huge quantity of a product, which causes cancer. This is despite the fact that safer and almost cheap alternatives to asbestos are available in the country. Instead of importing a hazardous material, it will be better if we spend some money in research and development and use environment friendly product. In view of the above, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative material.
The International Labour Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the International Programme on Chemical Safety, the European Union, the Collegium Ramazzini, the International Social Security Association, the International Commission on Occupational Health all support a global ban on asbestos.
Even the Supreme Court of India recognised in 1995 the hazards of asbestos in the case of Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC) versus Union of India and more recently, in 2009 the Kerala Human Rights Commission noted that “exposing Indians to asbestos is a human rights violation”.
Therefore, we call upon the Government of India to:
* Take steps to reduce, with the aim of stopping, its import of asbestos from Canada (mined mainly in the province of Quebec) and from all other exporting countries.
* Ban mining, manufacture, use and trade of asbestos in India.
* Ensure the passing of the White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill 2009 introduced in the Rajya Sabha in July 2009 (Bill No. XIII of 2009).
* Revise its stand and support the listing of chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list of the Rotterdam Convention.
* Ratify the ILO Convention on Asbestos.
* Take concrete steps to address the occupational and safety concerns of workers employed in asbestos related industries; ensure compensation for workers harmed by asbestos and support a just transition for workers losing employment due to a ban on the mining, use in manufacture, and trade in asbestos.
Gopal Krishna
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
banasbestosindia.blogspot.com
“No country has defended chrysotile as vigorously, and for as long, as Canada. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule banning asbestos in 1989, the government of Canada participated in an industry lawsuit that overturned the rule. When France banned asbestos a decade later, Canada teamed up with Brazil in an unsuccessful World Trade Organization challenge. And when a United Nations chemical review committee recommended in 2008 that chrysotile be listed under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention—a treaty that requires exporters of hazardous substances to use clear labeling and warn importers of any restrictions or bans—Canada, India, and a few other nations kept the recommendation from winning the unanimous support it needed to pass.”
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12422
Center for Public Integrity
26 July 2010
Exporting an Epidemic: A Global Asbestos Crisis
Jim Morris
In Osasco, Brazil, an industrial city on the western flank of Sao Paulo, the past is buried beneath a Wal-Mart Supercenter and a Sam's Club at the intersection of Avenida MariaCampos and Avenida dos Autonomistas. Here the Eternit asbestos cement factory was shuttered in 1993 and demolished in 1995 after 54 years of operation. Here three generations of workers—pouring asbestos into giant mixers with cement, cellulose and water, emptying bags, cleaning machinery—were immersed in fiber-rich white dust, setting themselves up for diseases that would debilitate many of them in retirement and kill some of them in an excruciating fashion. Scores have died since the mid-1990s, at least 10 of mesothelioma, a rare malignancy that eats into the chest wall and dispatches its victims swiftly. Aldo Vincentin succumbed at age 66 in July 2008, only three months after his diagnosis. “They knew about the dangers of the materials and they didn’t protect my husband,” his widow, Giselia Gomes Vincentin, says of Eternit. “I think many people will still die.”
Backed by a global network of trade groups and scientists, the multibillion-dollar asbestos industry has stayed afloat by depicting Osasco and similar tragedies as remnants of a darker time, when dust levels were high, exotic varieties of the fire-resistant mineral were used, and workers had little, if any, protection from the toxic fibers. There is evidence that dangers persist: Perilous conditions have been documented from Mexico City to Ahmedabad, India. And yet, despite waves of asbestos-related disease in North America, Europe, and Australia, bans or restrictions in 52 countries, piles of incriminating studies, and predictions of up to 10 million asbestos-related cancer deaths worldwide by 2030, the asbestos trade remains alive and well.
Asbestos is banned in the European Union. In the United States it is legal but the industry has paid out $70 billion in damages and litigation costs, and asbestos use is limited to automobile and aircraft brakes, gaskets and a few other products. The industry has found new markets in the developing world, however, where demand for cheap building materials is brisk. More than two million metric tons of asbestos were mined worldwide in 2009—led by Russia, China, and Brazil—mostly to be turned into asbestos cement for corrugated roofing and water pipes. More than half that amount was exported to developing countries like India and Mexico.
Health officials warn that widespread asbestos exposures, much as they did in the West, will result in epidemics of mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis in the developing world. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 125 million people encounter asbestos in the workplace, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 100,000 workers die each year from asbestos-related diseases. Thousands more perish from environmental exposures. Dr. James Leigh, retired director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Sydney School of Public Health in Australia, has forecast a total of 5 million to 10 million deaths from asbestos-related cancers by 2030. The estimate is “conservative,” Leigh says. “If exposures in developing countries lead to epidemics extending further in time, the numbers would be greater.” Leigh’s calculation does not include deaths from asbestosis, a non-cancerous, chronic lung disease. Another study, by two researchers in New Delhi, suggests that by 2020, deaths from asbestos-related cancers could exceed 1 million in developing nations.
Behind the industry’s growth is a marketing campaign involving a diverse set of companies, organized under a dozen trade associations and institutes. Backing them are interests ranging from mining companies like Brazil’s SAMA to manufacturers of asbestos cement sheets like India’s Visaka Industries. The largely uncharted industry campaign is coordinated, in part, by a government-backed institute in Montreal and reaches from New Delhi to Mexico City to the aptly named city of Asbest in Russia’s Ural Mountains.
An analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has tracked nearly $100 million in public and private money spent by these groups since the mid-1980s in three countries alone—Canada, India and Brazil—to keep asbestos in commerce. Their strategy, critics say, is one borrowed from the tobacco industry: create doubt, contest litigation, and delay regulation. “It’s totally unethical,” says Jukka Takala, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and a former ILO official. “It’s almost criminal. Asbestos cannot be used safely. It is clearly a carcinogen. It kills people.”
Industry-funded researchers have mounted a prolific response, placing into the scientific literature hundreds of articles claiming that asbestos can be used safely. Their argument is that chrysotile or white, asbestos—the only kind sold today—is orders of magnitude less hazardous than brown or blue asbestos, which the industry stopped mining in the 1990s. “It’s an extremely valuable material,” argues Dr. J. Corbett McDonald, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal who began studying chrysotile-exposed workers in the mid-1960s with the support of the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association. “It’s very cheap. If they try to rebuild Haiti and use no asbestos it will cost them much more. Any health effects [from chrysotile] will be trivial, if any.”
Health and labor officials recoil at such statements. “No exposure to asbestos is without risk,” the Collegium Ramazzini, an international society of scholars on occupational and environmental health, said in a recent paper. “Asbestos cancer victims die painful, lingering deaths. These deaths are almost entirely preventable.”
Last fall, the American Public Health Association joined the Collegium, the World Federation of Public Health Organizations, the International Commission on Occupational Health, and the International Trade Union Confederation in calling for a global asbestos ban. In 2009, a panel of 27 experts convened by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer reported, “Epidemiological evidence has increasingly shown an association of all forms of asbestos … with an increased risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma.” The panel also found there was new evidence that asbestos causes cancer of the larynx and the ovary.
But the asbestos industry has signaled that it will not go away quietly. Promotion of pro-industry studies is joined by campaigns of political lobbying and ad buying to ensure that asbestos is freely marketed in fast-growing countries. Consider some of the events just this year: In a March 16 letter, the head of the Asociación Colombiana de Fibras, a chrysotile trade group in Bogotá, Colombia, asked World Bank president Robert Zoellick to “soften your position” on the compound, arguing that projections of 100,000 asbestos-related deaths a year were based on “old data.” (The bank announced last year that it expects borrowers to use asbestos alternatives whenever feasible.) In documents obtained in Colombia by ICIJ, the association boasts of creating a spinoff in Ecuador to try to shape government regulations and decries the emergence of the “international prohibitionist movement” against asbestos. “We have to start a wide campaign among all the chrysotile associations in the world to counteract [the movement], sending communications to the directors of the World Health Organization and International Labor Organization,” state the minutes of a 2008 board meeting.
In a Jan. 7 letter, a lawyer for India’s Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association scolded Dr. T.K. Joshi, an occupational medicine specialist in New Delhi, for making “baseless” allegations against chrysotile and frightening workers. The lawyer demanded that Joshi retract his “yellow reporting” or, he implied, face legal action. A few weeks earlier, the association had placed an ad in The Times of India, that nation’s leading English daily, headlined, “Blast Those Myths About Asbestos Cement.” The ad claimed, among other things, that the cancer scourge in the West had come during a “period of ignorance,” when careless handling of asbestos insulation resulted in excessive exposures. Such exposures are long gone, the ad said, noting that asbestos cement products are “strong, durable, economical, energy efficient and eco-friendly.”
A Troubled History
Fire- and heat-resistant, strong and inexpensive, asbestos—a naturally occurring, fibrous mineral—was once seen as a construction material with near-magical properties. For decades, industrialized countries from the United States to Australia relied on it for countless products, including pipe and ceiling insulation, ship-building materials, brake shoes and pads, bricks, roofing, and flooring.
Ominous reports about the health effects of asbestos began appearing in Europe in the late 19th century. By 1918, American and Canadian insurance companies were refusing to cover asbestos workers because of rampant lung disease. In 1930, the ILO issued a warning: “All [asbestos] processes from extraction onwards unquestionably involve a considerable hazard.” In 1960, a South African pathologist confirmed a direct link between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma. And yet, uncontrolled use of asbestos only grew, peaking in the United States in 1973. By one estimate, 100 million Americans were occupationally exposed to asbestos during the 20th century.
The first asbestos lawsuit against an asbestos insulation manufacturer in the United States was filed in 1966. Internal documents showing corporate knowledge of the mineral’s lung-ravaging properties began to surface, and by 1981 more than 200 companies and insurers had been sued. The following year, the nation’s biggest maker of asbestos products—Johns Manville Corp.—and two other defendants filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to hold off the tide of litigation. From the 1960s through 2002, more than 730,000 people filed asbestos claims, resulting in damage payments and litigation costs of $70 billion, according to a 2005 study by the RAND Corp. Of this, $30 billion actually went to claimants.
As the evidence against asbestos accumulated in the 1980s, the Scandinavian countries began to impose bans. But the biggest blow for chrysotile came in 1999, when the European Commission decreed that products made of white asbestos would be outlawed as of Jan. 1, 2005. The EU’s decision to ban was replicated by Chile, Australia, Japan, and Egypt, among other countries. Most flatly forbid use of asbestos, though a few still allow it in brakes and gaskets. Fifty-two countries eventually slapped restrictions on its use, including most of the developed world. Less hazardous but generally more expensive substitutes such as polypropylene fiber cement, aluminum roof tiles, and steel-reinforced concrete pipe have gained favor.
Yet chrysotile continues to be mined and used heavily in some parts of the world; in 2008, raw fiber exports worldwide were valued by the United Nations at nearly $400 million. Russia is the world’s biggest producer, China the biggest consumer. But Canada—which uses almost no asbestos within its borders but still ships it abroad—is the primary booster, a role it assumed in the 1960s when the country’s mining industry in Quebec was threatened by studies tying the mineral to cancer. The federal and provincial governments together have given C$35 million over the past quarter-century to the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes the “controlled” use of asbestos in construction and manufacturing.
Controlled use is elusive in developing nations. ICIJ inquiries in a half-dozen countries, including on-site visits and interviews with local health officials and worker advocates, found spotty protection measures and widespread exposure to asbestos dust. This will likely produce outbreaks of occupational disease for years to come in places like India, China, and Mexico, experts say. “Anybody who talks about controlled asbestos use is either a liar or a fool,” says Barry Castleman, an environmental consultant based near Washington, D.C., who advises the WHO on asbestos matters. “If they can’t have controlled use in Sweden, they can’t have controlled use in Swaziland.”
The Chrysotile Institutes
At the center of the debate is the Canadian government-backed Chrysotile Institute. The institute’s president, Clement Godbout, insists that his organization’s message has been misinterpreted. “We never said that chrysotile was not dangerous,” he says. “We said that chrysotile is a product with potential risk and it has to be controlled. It’s not something that you put in your coffee every morning.”
The institute is a purveyor of information, Godbout emphasizes, not an international police agency. “We don’t have the power to interfere in any countries that have their own powers, their own sovereignty,” he says. “We don’t have the resources to travel the world every day.” Godbout says he is convinced that large asbestos cement factories in Indian cities have good dust controls and medical surveillance, though he acknowledges that there might be smaller operations “where the rules are not really followed. But it’s not an accurate picture of the industry. If you have someone on a highway in the U.S. driving at 200 miles per hour, it doesn't mean everybody’s doing it.”
The Chrysotile Institute has received $1 million from the asbestos industry over the past five years, according to Godbout, who says he doesn’t know how much was contributed in the previous 20, before he became chairman. Documents obtained under Canada’s Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin indicate that the industry gave more than $18 million to the institute from 1984 through 2001, meaning its total contribution to Godbout’s group is probably around $20 million.
The institute offers what it describes as “technical and financial aid” to a dozen sister organizations around the world. These organizations, in turn, seek to influence science and policy in their own countries and regions. Consider the situation in Mexico, which in 2007 used 10 times as much asbestos as its neighbor, the United States. Promoting chrysotile use is Luis Cejudo Alva, who has overseen the Instituto Mexicano de Fibro Industrias (IMFI) for 40 years. Cejudo says he is in regular contact with the Chrysotile Institute and related groups in Russia and Brazil, and gives presentations inside and outside of Mexico on the prudent handling of chrysotile. “If I knew that our industry kills people, that our products affect the population, I wouldn’t be here talking to you,” Cejudo says. “I am here because I have realized that many asbestos detractors exist, especially in Europe.” In the 1990s, he notes, IMFI members, along with their Canadian and American counterparts, agreed to stop selling asbestos to factories without adequate safety measures; this led to some plant closures. “We work hard with the government Health and Labor ministry representatives to create the regulations and to make constant visits to prove that the factories are following these regulations,” Cejudo says.
A more skeptical perspective comes from Dr. Guadalupe Aguilar Madrid, a physician and researcher at the Mexican Social Security Institute, which oversees public health under the federal Secretariat of Health. Aguilar maintains that the IMFI exists not to promote safety but to preserve the chrysotile market in Mexico. It has insinuated itself into both the Labor and Health secretariats, she said, and has had a “very big” influence over workplace and environmental rules. “When asbestos was banned in industrialized countries and [producers] started to lose money, they came to the developing countries to recover their investments,” Aguilar says. “After some South American countries banned asbestos, they focused on Mexico as their main manufacturer.”
Mexico ramped up imports of Canadian chrysotile in the 1970s, and its weak worker-protection laws have allowed dangerous conditions to proliferate, Aguilar says. About 70 factories in and around Mexico City manufacture asbestos cement, and an indeterminate number make asbestos brakes, boilers, and other products, according to Aguilar. All told, she estimates that 10,000 Mexicans work with asbestos at any one time, many without proper protection. As a result,Mexico can expect an epidemic of mesothelioma in coming years, Aguilar says. Her research shows that the number of deaths is rising steadily, as would be expected given the 30- to 40-year latency period commonly associated with the disease. Including mesothelioma and lung cancer, “we could be talking about 3,000 to 5,000 deaths from diseases related to asbestos every year,” the doctor says. She calls Canada’s chrysotile exports “deplorable.”
Another sister organization is the Brazilian Chrysotile Institute, based in the state of Goiás, site of the country’s only asbestos mine. A prosecutor in the state is seeking dissolution of the institute, a self-described public interest group with tax-exempt status. The prosecutor charges in a court pleading that the institute is a poorly disguised shill for the Brazilian asbestos industry, which provides virtually all its budget. Among other things, the group helped the Brazilian government fund studies rigged to benefit the industry, the prosecutor alleges. Having inflicted “social damage stemming from [its] illegal practices,” the institute should pay one million reais (about $550,000) in damages and a fine of 5,000 reais ($2,800) for every day it remains open, the pleading says. In a statement to ICIJ, a spokesman for the institute denied the allegations, saying the group “ensures the health and security of workers and users, protection of the environment and [provides] information to society.” Public records show that the institute has taken in more than $8 million from asbestos companies since 2006.
That a Brazilian prosecutor is even attempting to shut down the institute is unusual. Most if not all of the pro-chrysotile groups have friendly relationships with their host governments and appear to easily overpower public health advocates. In Russia,which produced one million metric tons of chrysotile in 2008, more than any country by far, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to assist the industry after a plea for help from a trade union chief. Putin “promised to support Russian producers of chrysotile, especially in situations where we find ourselves under political pressure at the international level,” Andrei Kholzakov, chairman of the union that represents workers at one of the country’s largest asbestos companies, Uralasbest, said in an April 2009 press release.
Perhaps nowhere is the industry as strong as in India, the world’s second-largest consumer of asbestos, after China. There are more than 400 asbestos cement factories in the Indian state of Gujarat alone, concentrated in the city of Ahmedabad, and the national market is growing at the rate of 30 percent a year, due mainly to construction in poor, rural areas, where asbestos sheet is standard cover for homes.The Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association (ACPMA) enjoys a “tight relationship” with federal and state politicians, says activist Madhumita Dutta. The state in which she lives, Tamil Nadu, owns an asbestos roofing materials plant, Dutta says, and there are similar arrangements in other states. “Things are a bit bleak,” she wrote in an e-mail to ICIJ. “The industry has grown and is expanding, their political clout getting stronger, their direct interventions in the government decision-making more apparent (through funding government studies), their propaganda more aggressive.” Government sources told ICIJ that the manufacturers’ association has received about $50 million from the industry since 1985, with annual allotments rising as anti-asbestos sentiment escalated. One of the group’s specialties is “advertorials”—faux news articles that extol the safety and value of asbestos products. The association’s annual budget now ranges from $17 million to $25 million, according to one member.
The ACPMA says on its website that the use of chrysotile in manufacturing “is safe for the workers, environment and the general public.” Earlier this year, however, authorities brought four criminal cases against owners of a 48-year-old asbestos cement factory in Ahmedabad, Gujarat Composite Ltd., alleging egregious health violations. At least 75 employees of the company have developed lung cancer over the past decade.
Though there are many uncertainties, researchers say that China appears poised for an explosion of asbestos-related illness in the not-too-distant future. Based on a formula developed by Antti Tossavainen with the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health—that one mesothelioma case occurs for every 170 tons of asbestos produced and consumed—at least 3,700 cases of the disease can be expected each year, not to mention thousands of cases of lung cancer, asbestosis, and stomach cancer. China has yet to see the level of disease experienced in Europe, the U.S. and other industrialized parts of the world, experts say, because per capita consumption of asbestos remained low into the 1970s. That's no longer true, as China is now the world’s biggest user of the mineral. Takala, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese will die of asbestos-related ailments each year by 2035. The country has about 1,000 asbestos mines and production facilities, one million asbestos workers, and annual consumption of more than 600,000 metric tons of chrysotile.
Canada’s Controversial Role
No country has defended chrysotile as vigorously, and for as long, as Canada. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule banning asbestos in 1989, the government of Canada participated in an industry lawsuit that overturned the rule. When France banned asbestos a decade later, Canada teamed up with Brazil in an unsuccessful World Trade Organization challenge. And when a United Nations chemical review committee recommended in 2008 that chrysotile be listed under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention—a treaty that requires exporters of hazardous substances to use clear labeling and warn importers of any restrictions or bans—Canada, India, and a few other nations kept the recommendation from winning the unanimous support it needed to pass.
It was the fourth time since 2004 that chrysotile had come up for consideration and the fourth time it had failed to make Annex III. It probably won’t come up again until 2011 at the earliest. “We knew it was not going to go through smoothly and unopposed,” says Sheila Logan with the United Nations Environment Programme, who was in the thick of negotiations on chrysotile in 2006. Annex III, Logan explains, is a “semi-blacklist, though there are many substances on there that many countries will continue to import. The fear [among exporters and users] is that countries will just take a blanket approach and say, ‘No, I’m not importing anything that’s included in the convention.’” Logan says she believes that chrysotile should be listed, even if—as some scientists claim—it is less carcinogenic than blue or brown asbestos, both of which belong to a family known as amphiboles. She draws an analogy: “An X-ray may be less dangerous than a gamma-ray burst, but I’m not going to stand in front of either of them. That’s my personal choice.”
Canada today is the world’s fifth largest producer of asbestos and its fourth largest exporter, shipping $97 million of raw fiber overseas in 2008. All this comes from just two mines, both located in Québec. The Chrysotile Institute says the industry accounts for about 700 direct and 2,000 indirect jobs—hardly an economic juggernaut. But it survives despite mounting criticism: Both the federal and provincial governments have been besieged by letters from prominent academics, physicians, and others protesting Canada’s export of chrysotile. In a statement to ICIJ, the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources made its case: “There are no valid reasons to halt chrysotile export since it can be used safely. [D]eveloping countries are in great need of this kind of material (as we were some years ago) to build good infrastructures. Furthermore, substitutes to chrysotile have not yet been proven to be safer.” In addition to funding the Chrysotile Institute, the ministry has given C$748,000 since 2004 to the Société Nationale de l’Amiante, an asbestos research group. No longer active, the group relocated its office to the ministry, which is in the process of settling its “past commitments and responsibilities,” a government spokesman said.
Christian Paradis, natural resources minister in Canada’s conservative government, is similarly supportive of the industry. A native of the town of Thetford Mines, Quebec, Paradis once served as president of theAsbestos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Since 1979, the Government of Canada has promoted the safe and controlled use of chrysotile, [and] our position remains the same,” Paradis said in a statement to ICIJ. “Banning chrysotile is neither necessary nor appropriate. … All recent scientific studies show that chrysotile fibers, the only asbestos fiber that is produced and exported from Canada, can be used safely under controlled conditions.”
Fine for export, perhaps, but not for domestic use. In 2009, Canada sent nearly 153,000 metric tons of chrysotile abroad. More than half went to India; the rest went to Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. At home it was a different story: Canada used only 6,000 tons domestically in 2006, the last year for which data are available. Canadian officials seem determined to boost production: The Quebec Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade is considering a C$58 million loan guarantee to save the floundering Jeffrey Mine. The mine’s owner has announced plans to ship 200,000 tons of chrysotile per year to Asia if the money comes through.
Amir Attaran, an associate professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, says he is ashamed of the nation’s stance. “It’s absolutely clear that [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his government have accepted the reality that the present course of action kills people, and they find that tolerable,” Attaran says. “Canada’s certainly aware that countries which purchase chrysotile do so in the absence of correct regulation.”
The Scientists
On March 10, David Bernstein stepped up to the podium at the Society of Toxicology’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and announced the results of his latest study. An American-born toxicologist based in Geneva, Bernstein began researching chrysotile in the late 1990s at the behest of a mine operator in Brazil. He was now reporting that rats exposed to chrysotile asbestos for five days, six hours a day, had shown no ill effects whatsoever. Rats exposed to brown amosite, a type of amphibole, hadn’t fared so well. The chrysotile fibers were cleared quickly from the animals’ lungs and caused “no pathological response at any point,” even though the exposure level was 50 percent higher than that for amosite, Bernstein said. The fibers have very different appearances under magnification. Chrysotile fibers look like ultrathin, rolled sheets; amosite and other amphiboles look like solid rods.
The sponsor of the as-yet unpublished study was Georgia-Pacific Corp. of Atlanta, which once made a ready-mix joint compound—a gooey white substance used to seal joints between sheets of drywall—that contained 5 percent chrysotile. Georgia-Pacific has been sued in the United States by a number of mesothelioma victims who claim they were exposed to asbestos while sanding the dried compound. Bernstein’s latest study, done in conjunction with Georgia-Pacific’s chief toxicologist, Stewart Holm, could be good news for the company.
Bernstein is the most active of a dozen or so industry-backed scientists who have helped fuel the asbestos trade by producing papers, lecturing, and testifying on the relative safety of chrysotile. The industry has spent tens of millions of dollars funding their studies, which have been cited some 5,000 times in the medical literature as well as by lobby groups from India to Canada. Bernstein’s work alone has been cited 460 times. He has been quoted or mentioned in Zimbabwe’s Financial Gazette, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and other publications around the world. His curriculum vitae suggests that he’s been a one-man road show for chrysotile, giving talks in 19 countries since 1999. Among his stops: Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. The industry paid for all of his travel, Bernstein told ICIJ in an interview.
Indeed, all of Bernstein’s work on asbestos has been underwritten by the industry, and he has become its principal defender at scientific meetings and in other venues. Bernstein says he has no idea how much all his studies have cost and emphasizes that, in any case, most of the money goes to the laboratory in Basel, Switzerland, where the animal experiments are performed. Court documents show that one sponsor, Union Carbide, paid $400,623 for work by Bernstein in 2003 and 2005.
In an interview in his hotel lobby the day before his presentation in Salt Lake City, Bernstein said that Georgia-Pacific in no way influenced his chrysotile research, nor have any of his other corporate sponsors. “I would work for any group,” Bernstein explained. “I have no limitations. Unfortunately, the groups that don’t like this work don’t ask me.” He decried the hyperbole surrounding chrysotile—“It’s a hysterical thing; it doesn’t come from science”—and said he doesn’t believe the fragile white fibers cause mesothelioma. They could cause lung cancer, he said, if exposures were extremely high.
The relevance of Bernstein’s rat experiments to humans is contested by fellow researchers. For example, an expert panel assembled by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that rodents clear short asbestos fibers from their lungs about 10 times faster than do people. Bernstein’s animals, moreover, were exposed over a relatively brief period of time. Many workers inhale asbestos over months or years, not days. “Not everyone exposed, even heavily, will necessarily develop disease, but data in the scientific literature show that as little as one day of exposure in man and animals can lead to mesothelioma, and a month or less of exposure in man doubles the risk of lung cancer,” says Dr. Arthur Frank, a physician and professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia.
If Bernstein is chrysotile’s scientific ambassador, then 92-year-old J. Corbett McDonald is its longest-tenured champion. He is the author of three dozen scientific papers on chrysotile, and his work has been cited in the medical literature nearly 1,500 times. In a telephone interview, McDonald said he was approached by the Canadian government in 1964to study asbestos miners and millersin Quebec; he, in turn, appealed to the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association for funding, which it agreed to provide. The impetus for the research, McDonald said, was a paper by Dr. Irving Selikoff of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine reporting that insulation workers with relatively light exposures to asbestos were dying of mesothelioma and other cancers at strikingly high rates.
A Lesson from Tobacco?
Minutes of the mining association’s November 1965 meeting, obtained by lawyers for asbestos victims, suggest that the group saw the tobacco industry as a paradigm: “The consensus of opinion seemed to point out that the QAMA should take into its hands the ways and means to conduct the necessary research instead of doing it through universities or letting it fall in the hands of the Government. As an example, it was recalled that the tobacco industry launched its own program and it now knows where it stands. Industry is always well advised to look after its own problems.”
Forty-five years later, McDonald remains resolute in his defense of asbestos. He says there is “very strong evidence” that contaminants in chrysotile, and not the chrysotile itself, caused excesses of mesothelioma among the Quebec workers. The toxic agent, he suspects, was tremolite, a type of amphibole. McDonald insists that his work was never influenced by the asbestos industry. Indeed, he wasn’t sure how much its leaders even cared about his work. “It used to worry us a bit that they took so little interest in the results,” he says.
McDonald’s tremolite theory—rebutted by studies of textile workers exposed to almost pure chrysotile, and just this year, a study of workers at a brake-lining factory—follows a pattern that Dr. David Egilman, a physician and clinical associate professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, calls ABC: anything but chrysotile. In fact, some researchers and defense lawyers have argued that mesothelioma could be triggered by a polio vaccine contaminated with a monkey virus. “Like the tobacco industry, they’ve been successful at manipulating scientific theories to confuse the public about the real risks of using asbestos,” says Egilman, who, like Frank and Castleman, testifies on behalf of plaintiffs in asbestos lawsuits.
Bernstein’s and McDonald’s studies have proved helpful to an industry under growing pressure to disband. Amphiboles such as the virulent blue crocidolite, which killed miners in South Africa for nearly two centuries before the nation imposed a ban in 2008, are virtually never encountered today. There are obvious economic incentives, skeptics say, to blame most of the asbestos disease in the past 50 years on obscure types of the mineral and imply that chrysotile, which accounts for 95 percent of all the asbestos ever used, is relatively benign.
“Is there a legitimate scientific question as to whether white asbestos is less dangerous [than blue or brown]? Yes,” Frank says. “But is it safe? No.”
Several key criticisms have been leveled at the researchers who defend chrysotile. They tend, for example, to focus on mesothelioma—the disease that comes up most often in litigation because it is considered a marker of asbestos exposure—and ignore lung cancer, which occurs more frequently. ”Chrysotile is just as potent [as amphiboles] in terms of lung cancer, and it might even be more potent,” says Peter Infante, former director of the Office of Standards Review at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They fixate on the amount of time chrysotile fibers spend in the lungs, failing to acknowledge that the fibers can do a figurative hit-and-run on cells, damaging DNA and precipitating cancer. And they buy into what WHO consultant Castleman calls the fallacy of controlled use—the idea that employers in the developing world are serious about dust suppression and ventilation.
Castleman has been researching asbestos cement substitutes—roofing and pipes made with cellulose fibers, ductile iron and fiberglass, for example—for the WHO and has determined that, at most, they cost 10 to 15 percent more to produce. By his reckoning, asbestos is not much of a bargain. “Obviously, the cost of death and disease and the eventual cost of even halfway properly managing asbestos cement structures wipes out any short-term savings of 10 to 15 percent,” Castleman says. As for another industry claim—that substitute products may be more dangerous than chrysotile—he notes, “They do not release carcinogenic dust whenever they are sawed, drilled, and demolished.”
Despite the reassuring studies and the million-dollar marketing efforts, the asbestos industry faces stiffening headwinds. The number of countries imposing bans or restrictions continues to climb, and groups of health and labor activists have sprung up in China, Brazil, India, and other high-use countries. The government of Canada, long considered a leader on environmental and health matters, has come under withering attack for pushing exports.
For his part, scientist Bernstein contends that his conclusion is the correct one: White asbestos can be used safely around the world. That the WHO, the European Union, and dozens of national governments disagree doesn’t bother him. “It’s not in my interest whether it’s the minority view or not,” Bernstein says. “I’ve always felt that science will prevail at the end.”
Jim Morris writes for the Center for Public Integrity, from where this article is adapted. Ana Avila in Mexico City, Dan Ettinger in Washington, D.C., Murali Krishnan in New Delhi, Roman Shleynov in Moscow, and Marcelo Soares in Sao Paulo contributed to this article.
The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill, 2009 introduced by the INC Member of Parliament from Maharashtra, Shri Vijay Jawaharlal Darda, in the Rajya Sabha on 31 July 2009 captures clearly the global stand on this issue:
The white asbestos is highly carcinogenic even the World Health Organisation has reported that it causes cancer. It is a rare fibrous material that is used to make rooftops and brake linings. More than fifty countries have already banned the use and import of white asbestos. Even the countries that export it to India prefer not to use it domestically. But in our country, it is imported without any restriction. Canada and Russia are the biggest exporters of white asbestos. In 2007, Canada exported almost Ninety five percent of the white asbestos it mined and out of it forty-three percent was shipped to India. It is quite surprising that our country is openly importing huge quantity of a product, which causes cancer. This is despite the fact that safer and almost cheap alternatives to asbestos are available in the country. Instead of importing a hazardous material, it will be better if we spend some money in research and development and use environment friendly product. In view of the above, there is an urgent need for a total ban on the import and use of white asbestos and promote the use of alternative material.
The International Labour Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the International Programme on Chemical Safety, the European Union, the Collegium Ramazzini, the International Social Security Association, the International Commission on Occupational Health all support a global ban on asbestos.
Even the Supreme Court of India recognised in 1995 the hazards of asbestos in the case of Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC) versus Union of India and more recently, in 2009 the Kerala Human Rights Commission noted that “exposing Indians to asbestos is a human rights violation”.
Therefore, we call upon the Government of India to:
* Take steps to reduce, with the aim of stopping, its import of asbestos from Canada (mined mainly in the province of Quebec) and from all other exporting countries.
* Ban mining, manufacture, use and trade of asbestos in India.
* Ensure the passing of the White Asbestos (Ban on Use and Import) Bill 2009 introduced in the Rajya Sabha in July 2009 (Bill No. XIII of 2009).
* Revise its stand and support the listing of chrysotile asbestos in the PIC list of the Rotterdam Convention.
* Ratify the ILO Convention on Asbestos.
* Take concrete steps to address the occupational and safety concerns of workers employed in asbestos related industries; ensure compensation for workers harmed by asbestos and support a just transition for workers losing employment due to a ban on the mining, use in manufacture, and trade in asbestos.
Gopal Krishna
Ban Asbestos Network of India (BANI)
banasbestosindia.blogspot.com
“No country has defended chrysotile as vigorously, and for as long, as Canada. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule banning asbestos in 1989, the government of Canada participated in an industry lawsuit that overturned the rule. When France banned asbestos a decade later, Canada teamed up with Brazil in an unsuccessful World Trade Organization challenge. And when a United Nations chemical review committee recommended in 2008 that chrysotile be listed under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention—a treaty that requires exporters of hazardous substances to use clear labeling and warn importers of any restrictions or bans—Canada, India, and a few other nations kept the recommendation from winning the unanimous support it needed to pass.”
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12422
Center for Public Integrity
26 July 2010
Exporting an Epidemic: A Global Asbestos Crisis
Jim Morris
In Osasco, Brazil, an industrial city on the western flank of Sao Paulo, the past is buried beneath a Wal-Mart Supercenter and a Sam's Club at the intersection of Avenida MariaCampos and Avenida dos Autonomistas. Here the Eternit asbestos cement factory was shuttered in 1993 and demolished in 1995 after 54 years of operation. Here three generations of workers—pouring asbestos into giant mixers with cement, cellulose and water, emptying bags, cleaning machinery—were immersed in fiber-rich white dust, setting themselves up for diseases that would debilitate many of them in retirement and kill some of them in an excruciating fashion. Scores have died since the mid-1990s, at least 10 of mesothelioma, a rare malignancy that eats into the chest wall and dispatches its victims swiftly. Aldo Vincentin succumbed at age 66 in July 2008, only three months after his diagnosis. “They knew about the dangers of the materials and they didn’t protect my husband,” his widow, Giselia Gomes Vincentin, says of Eternit. “I think many people will still die.”
Backed by a global network of trade groups and scientists, the multibillion-dollar asbestos industry has stayed afloat by depicting Osasco and similar tragedies as remnants of a darker time, when dust levels were high, exotic varieties of the fire-resistant mineral were used, and workers had little, if any, protection from the toxic fibers. There is evidence that dangers persist: Perilous conditions have been documented from Mexico City to Ahmedabad, India. And yet, despite waves of asbestos-related disease in North America, Europe, and Australia, bans or restrictions in 52 countries, piles of incriminating studies, and predictions of up to 10 million asbestos-related cancer deaths worldwide by 2030, the asbestos trade remains alive and well.
Asbestos is banned in the European Union. In the United States it is legal but the industry has paid out $70 billion in damages and litigation costs, and asbestos use is limited to automobile and aircraft brakes, gaskets and a few other products. The industry has found new markets in the developing world, however, where demand for cheap building materials is brisk. More than two million metric tons of asbestos were mined worldwide in 2009—led by Russia, China, and Brazil—mostly to be turned into asbestos cement for corrugated roofing and water pipes. More than half that amount was exported to developing countries like India and Mexico.
Health officials warn that widespread asbestos exposures, much as they did in the West, will result in epidemics of mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis in the developing world. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 125 million people encounter asbestos in the workplace, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 100,000 workers die each year from asbestos-related diseases. Thousands more perish from environmental exposures. Dr. James Leigh, retired director of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Sydney School of Public Health in Australia, has forecast a total of 5 million to 10 million deaths from asbestos-related cancers by 2030. The estimate is “conservative,” Leigh says. “If exposures in developing countries lead to epidemics extending further in time, the numbers would be greater.” Leigh’s calculation does not include deaths from asbestosis, a non-cancerous, chronic lung disease. Another study, by two researchers in New Delhi, suggests that by 2020, deaths from asbestos-related cancers could exceed 1 million in developing nations.
Behind the industry’s growth is a marketing campaign involving a diverse set of companies, organized under a dozen trade associations and institutes. Backing them are interests ranging from mining companies like Brazil’s SAMA to manufacturers of asbestos cement sheets like India’s Visaka Industries. The largely uncharted industry campaign is coordinated, in part, by a government-backed institute in Montreal and reaches from New Delhi to Mexico City to the aptly named city of Asbest in Russia’s Ural Mountains.
An analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has tracked nearly $100 million in public and private money spent by these groups since the mid-1980s in three countries alone—Canada, India and Brazil—to keep asbestos in commerce. Their strategy, critics say, is one borrowed from the tobacco industry: create doubt, contest litigation, and delay regulation. “It’s totally unethical,” says Jukka Takala, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and a former ILO official. “It’s almost criminal. Asbestos cannot be used safely. It is clearly a carcinogen. It kills people.”
Industry-funded researchers have mounted a prolific response, placing into the scientific literature hundreds of articles claiming that asbestos can be used safely. Their argument is that chrysotile or white, asbestos—the only kind sold today—is orders of magnitude less hazardous than brown or blue asbestos, which the industry stopped mining in the 1990s. “It’s an extremely valuable material,” argues Dr. J. Corbett McDonald, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal who began studying chrysotile-exposed workers in the mid-1960s with the support of the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association. “It’s very cheap. If they try to rebuild Haiti and use no asbestos it will cost them much more. Any health effects [from chrysotile] will be trivial, if any.”
Health and labor officials recoil at such statements. “No exposure to asbestos is without risk,” the Collegium Ramazzini, an international society of scholars on occupational and environmental health, said in a recent paper. “Asbestos cancer victims die painful, lingering deaths. These deaths are almost entirely preventable.”
Last fall, the American Public Health Association joined the Collegium, the World Federation of Public Health Organizations, the International Commission on Occupational Health, and the International Trade Union Confederation in calling for a global asbestos ban. In 2009, a panel of 27 experts convened by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer reported, “Epidemiological evidence has increasingly shown an association of all forms of asbestos … with an increased risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma.” The panel also found there was new evidence that asbestos causes cancer of the larynx and the ovary.
But the asbestos industry has signaled that it will not go away quietly. Promotion of pro-industry studies is joined by campaigns of political lobbying and ad buying to ensure that asbestos is freely marketed in fast-growing countries. Consider some of the events just this year: In a March 16 letter, the head of the Asociación Colombiana de Fibras, a chrysotile trade group in Bogotá, Colombia, asked World Bank president Robert Zoellick to “soften your position” on the compound, arguing that projections of 100,000 asbestos-related deaths a year were based on “old data.” (The bank announced last year that it expects borrowers to use asbestos alternatives whenever feasible.) In documents obtained in Colombia by ICIJ, the association boasts of creating a spinoff in Ecuador to try to shape government regulations and decries the emergence of the “international prohibitionist movement” against asbestos. “We have to start a wide campaign among all the chrysotile associations in the world to counteract [the movement], sending communications to the directors of the World Health Organization and International Labor Organization,” state the minutes of a 2008 board meeting.
In a Jan. 7 letter, a lawyer for India’s Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association scolded Dr. T.K. Joshi, an occupational medicine specialist in New Delhi, for making “baseless” allegations against chrysotile and frightening workers. The lawyer demanded that Joshi retract his “yellow reporting” or, he implied, face legal action. A few weeks earlier, the association had placed an ad in The Times of India, that nation’s leading English daily, headlined, “Blast Those Myths About Asbestos Cement.” The ad claimed, among other things, that the cancer scourge in the West had come during a “period of ignorance,” when careless handling of asbestos insulation resulted in excessive exposures. Such exposures are long gone, the ad said, noting that asbestos cement products are “strong, durable, economical, energy efficient and eco-friendly.”
A Troubled History
Fire- and heat-resistant, strong and inexpensive, asbestos—a naturally occurring, fibrous mineral—was once seen as a construction material with near-magical properties. For decades, industrialized countries from the United States to Australia relied on it for countless products, including pipe and ceiling insulation, ship-building materials, brake shoes and pads, bricks, roofing, and flooring.
Ominous reports about the health effects of asbestos began appearing in Europe in the late 19th century. By 1918, American and Canadian insurance companies were refusing to cover asbestos workers because of rampant lung disease. In 1930, the ILO issued a warning: “All [asbestos] processes from extraction onwards unquestionably involve a considerable hazard.” In 1960, a South African pathologist confirmed a direct link between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma. And yet, uncontrolled use of asbestos only grew, peaking in the United States in 1973. By one estimate, 100 million Americans were occupationally exposed to asbestos during the 20th century.
The first asbestos lawsuit against an asbestos insulation manufacturer in the United States was filed in 1966. Internal documents showing corporate knowledge of the mineral’s lung-ravaging properties began to surface, and by 1981 more than 200 companies and insurers had been sued. The following year, the nation’s biggest maker of asbestos products—Johns Manville Corp.—and two other defendants filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to hold off the tide of litigation. From the 1960s through 2002, more than 730,000 people filed asbestos claims, resulting in damage payments and litigation costs of $70 billion, according to a 2005 study by the RAND Corp. Of this, $30 billion actually went to claimants.
As the evidence against asbestos accumulated in the 1980s, the Scandinavian countries began to impose bans. But the biggest blow for chrysotile came in 1999, when the European Commission decreed that products made of white asbestos would be outlawed as of Jan. 1, 2005. The EU’s decision to ban was replicated by Chile, Australia, Japan, and Egypt, among other countries. Most flatly forbid use of asbestos, though a few still allow it in brakes and gaskets. Fifty-two countries eventually slapped restrictions on its use, including most of the developed world. Less hazardous but generally more expensive substitutes such as polypropylene fiber cement, aluminum roof tiles, and steel-reinforced concrete pipe have gained favor.
Yet chrysotile continues to be mined and used heavily in some parts of the world; in 2008, raw fiber exports worldwide were valued by the United Nations at nearly $400 million. Russia is the world’s biggest producer, China the biggest consumer. But Canada—which uses almost no asbestos within its borders but still ships it abroad—is the primary booster, a role it assumed in the 1960s when the country’s mining industry in Quebec was threatened by studies tying the mineral to cancer. The federal and provincial governments together have given C$35 million over the past quarter-century to the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes the “controlled” use of asbestos in construction and manufacturing.
Controlled use is elusive in developing nations. ICIJ inquiries in a half-dozen countries, including on-site visits and interviews with local health officials and worker advocates, found spotty protection measures and widespread exposure to asbestos dust. This will likely produce outbreaks of occupational disease for years to come in places like India, China, and Mexico, experts say. “Anybody who talks about controlled asbestos use is either a liar or a fool,” says Barry Castleman, an environmental consultant based near Washington, D.C., who advises the WHO on asbestos matters. “If they can’t have controlled use in Sweden, they can’t have controlled use in Swaziland.”
The Chrysotile Institutes
At the center of the debate is the Canadian government-backed Chrysotile Institute. The institute’s president, Clement Godbout, insists that his organization’s message has been misinterpreted. “We never said that chrysotile was not dangerous,” he says. “We said that chrysotile is a product with potential risk and it has to be controlled. It’s not something that you put in your coffee every morning.”
The institute is a purveyor of information, Godbout emphasizes, not an international police agency. “We don’t have the power to interfere in any countries that have their own powers, their own sovereignty,” he says. “We don’t have the resources to travel the world every day.” Godbout says he is convinced that large asbestos cement factories in Indian cities have good dust controls and medical surveillance, though he acknowledges that there might be smaller operations “where the rules are not really followed. But it’s not an accurate picture of the industry. If you have someone on a highway in the U.S. driving at 200 miles per hour, it doesn't mean everybody’s doing it.”
The Chrysotile Institute has received $1 million from the asbestos industry over the past five years, according to Godbout, who says he doesn’t know how much was contributed in the previous 20, before he became chairman. Documents obtained under Canada’s Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin indicate that the industry gave more than $18 million to the institute from 1984 through 2001, meaning its total contribution to Godbout’s group is probably around $20 million.
The institute offers what it describes as “technical and financial aid” to a dozen sister organizations around the world. These organizations, in turn, seek to influence science and policy in their own countries and regions. Consider the situation in Mexico, which in 2007 used 10 times as much asbestos as its neighbor, the United States. Promoting chrysotile use is Luis Cejudo Alva, who has overseen the Instituto Mexicano de Fibro Industrias (IMFI) for 40 years. Cejudo says he is in regular contact with the Chrysotile Institute and related groups in Russia and Brazil, and gives presentations inside and outside of Mexico on the prudent handling of chrysotile. “If I knew that our industry kills people, that our products affect the population, I wouldn’t be here talking to you,” Cejudo says. “I am here because I have realized that many asbestos detractors exist, especially in Europe.” In the 1990s, he notes, IMFI members, along with their Canadian and American counterparts, agreed to stop selling asbestos to factories without adequate safety measures; this led to some plant closures. “We work hard with the government Health and Labor ministry representatives to create the regulations and to make constant visits to prove that the factories are following these regulations,” Cejudo says.
A more skeptical perspective comes from Dr. Guadalupe Aguilar Madrid, a physician and researcher at the Mexican Social Security Institute, which oversees public health under the federal Secretariat of Health. Aguilar maintains that the IMFI exists not to promote safety but to preserve the chrysotile market in Mexico. It has insinuated itself into both the Labor and Health secretariats, she said, and has had a “very big” influence over workplace and environmental rules. “When asbestos was banned in industrialized countries and [producers] started to lose money, they came to the developing countries to recover their investments,” Aguilar says. “After some South American countries banned asbestos, they focused on Mexico as their main manufacturer.”
Mexico ramped up imports of Canadian chrysotile in the 1970s, and its weak worker-protection laws have allowed dangerous conditions to proliferate, Aguilar says. About 70 factories in and around Mexico City manufacture asbestos cement, and an indeterminate number make asbestos brakes, boilers, and other products, according to Aguilar. All told, she estimates that 10,000 Mexicans work with asbestos at any one time, many without proper protection. As a result,Mexico can expect an epidemic of mesothelioma in coming years, Aguilar says. Her research shows that the number of deaths is rising steadily, as would be expected given the 30- to 40-year latency period commonly associated with the disease. Including mesothelioma and lung cancer, “we could be talking about 3,000 to 5,000 deaths from diseases related to asbestos every year,” the doctor says. She calls Canada’s chrysotile exports “deplorable.”
Another sister organization is the Brazilian Chrysotile Institute, based in the state of Goiás, site of the country’s only asbestos mine. A prosecutor in the state is seeking dissolution of the institute, a self-described public interest group with tax-exempt status. The prosecutor charges in a court pleading that the institute is a poorly disguised shill for the Brazilian asbestos industry, which provides virtually all its budget. Among other things, the group helped the Brazilian government fund studies rigged to benefit the industry, the prosecutor alleges. Having inflicted “social damage stemming from [its] illegal practices,” the institute should pay one million reais (about $550,000) in damages and a fine of 5,000 reais ($2,800) for every day it remains open, the pleading says. In a statement to ICIJ, a spokesman for the institute denied the allegations, saying the group “ensures the health and security of workers and users, protection of the environment and [provides] information to society.” Public records show that the institute has taken in more than $8 million from asbestos companies since 2006.
That a Brazilian prosecutor is even attempting to shut down the institute is unusual. Most if not all of the pro-chrysotile groups have friendly relationships with their host governments and appear to easily overpower public health advocates. In Russia,which produced one million metric tons of chrysotile in 2008, more than any country by far, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to assist the industry after a plea for help from a trade union chief. Putin “promised to support Russian producers of chrysotile, especially in situations where we find ourselves under political pressure at the international level,” Andrei Kholzakov, chairman of the union that represents workers at one of the country’s largest asbestos companies, Uralasbest, said in an April 2009 press release.
Perhaps nowhere is the industry as strong as in India, the world’s second-largest consumer of asbestos, after China. There are more than 400 asbestos cement factories in the Indian state of Gujarat alone, concentrated in the city of Ahmedabad, and the national market is growing at the rate of 30 percent a year, due mainly to construction in poor, rural areas, where asbestos sheet is standard cover for homes.The Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association (ACPMA) enjoys a “tight relationship” with federal and state politicians, says activist Madhumita Dutta. The state in which she lives, Tamil Nadu, owns an asbestos roofing materials plant, Dutta says, and there are similar arrangements in other states. “Things are a bit bleak,” she wrote in an e-mail to ICIJ. “The industry has grown and is expanding, their political clout getting stronger, their direct interventions in the government decision-making more apparent (through funding government studies), their propaganda more aggressive.” Government sources told ICIJ that the manufacturers’ association has received about $50 million from the industry since 1985, with annual allotments rising as anti-asbestos sentiment escalated. One of the group’s specialties is “advertorials”—faux news articles that extol the safety and value of asbestos products. The association’s annual budget now ranges from $17 million to $25 million, according to one member.
The ACPMA says on its website that the use of chrysotile in manufacturing “is safe for the workers, environment and the general public.” Earlier this year, however, authorities brought four criminal cases against owners of a 48-year-old asbestos cement factory in Ahmedabad, Gujarat Composite Ltd., alleging egregious health violations. At least 75 employees of the company have developed lung cancer over the past decade.
Though there are many uncertainties, researchers say that China appears poised for an explosion of asbestos-related illness in the not-too-distant future. Based on a formula developed by Antti Tossavainen with the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health—that one mesothelioma case occurs for every 170 tons of asbestos produced and consumed—at least 3,700 cases of the disease can be expected each year, not to mention thousands of cases of lung cancer, asbestosis, and stomach cancer. China has yet to see the level of disease experienced in Europe, the U.S. and other industrialized parts of the world, experts say, because per capita consumption of asbestos remained low into the 1970s. That's no longer true, as China is now the world’s biggest user of the mineral. Takala, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese will die of asbestos-related ailments each year by 2035. The country has about 1,000 asbestos mines and production facilities, one million asbestos workers, and annual consumption of more than 600,000 metric tons of chrysotile.
Canada’s Controversial Role
No country has defended chrysotile as vigorously, and for as long, as Canada. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule banning asbestos in 1989, the government of Canada participated in an industry lawsuit that overturned the rule. When France banned asbestos a decade later, Canada teamed up with Brazil in an unsuccessful World Trade Organization challenge. And when a United Nations chemical review committee recommended in 2008 that chrysotile be listed under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention—a treaty that requires exporters of hazardous substances to use clear labeling and warn importers of any restrictions or bans—Canada, India, and a few other nations kept the recommendation from winning the unanimous support it needed to pass.
It was the fourth time since 2004 that chrysotile had come up for consideration and the fourth time it had failed to make Annex III. It probably won’t come up again until 2011 at the earliest. “We knew it was not going to go through smoothly and unopposed,” says Sheila Logan with the United Nations Environment Programme, who was in the thick of negotiations on chrysotile in 2006. Annex III, Logan explains, is a “semi-blacklist, though there are many substances on there that many countries will continue to import. The fear [among exporters and users] is that countries will just take a blanket approach and say, ‘No, I’m not importing anything that’s included in the convention.’” Logan says she believes that chrysotile should be listed, even if—as some scientists claim—it is less carcinogenic than blue or brown asbestos, both of which belong to a family known as amphiboles. She draws an analogy: “An X-ray may be less dangerous than a gamma-ray burst, but I’m not going to stand in front of either of them. That’s my personal choice.”
Canada today is the world’s fifth largest producer of asbestos and its fourth largest exporter, shipping $97 million of raw fiber overseas in 2008. All this comes from just two mines, both located in Québec. The Chrysotile Institute says the industry accounts for about 700 direct and 2,000 indirect jobs—hardly an economic juggernaut. But it survives despite mounting criticism: Both the federal and provincial governments have been besieged by letters from prominent academics, physicians, and others protesting Canada’s export of chrysotile. In a statement to ICIJ, the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources made its case: “There are no valid reasons to halt chrysotile export since it can be used safely. [D]eveloping countries are in great need of this kind of material (as we were some years ago) to build good infrastructures. Furthermore, substitutes to chrysotile have not yet been proven to be safer.” In addition to funding the Chrysotile Institute, the ministry has given C$748,000 since 2004 to the Société Nationale de l’Amiante, an asbestos research group. No longer active, the group relocated its office to the ministry, which is in the process of settling its “past commitments and responsibilities,” a government spokesman said.
Christian Paradis, natural resources minister in Canada’s conservative government, is similarly supportive of the industry. A native of the town of Thetford Mines, Quebec, Paradis once served as president of theAsbestos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Since 1979, the Government of Canada has promoted the safe and controlled use of chrysotile, [and] our position remains the same,” Paradis said in a statement to ICIJ. “Banning chrysotile is neither necessary nor appropriate. … All recent scientific studies show that chrysotile fibers, the only asbestos fiber that is produced and exported from Canada, can be used safely under controlled conditions.”
Fine for export, perhaps, but not for domestic use. In 2009, Canada sent nearly 153,000 metric tons of chrysotile abroad. More than half went to India; the rest went to Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. At home it was a different story: Canada used only 6,000 tons domestically in 2006, the last year for which data are available. Canadian officials seem determined to boost production: The Quebec Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade is considering a C$58 million loan guarantee to save the floundering Jeffrey Mine. The mine’s owner has announced plans to ship 200,000 tons of chrysotile per year to Asia if the money comes through.
Amir Attaran, an associate professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, says he is ashamed of the nation’s stance. “It’s absolutely clear that [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his government have accepted the reality that the present course of action kills people, and they find that tolerable,” Attaran says. “Canada’s certainly aware that countries which purchase chrysotile do so in the absence of correct regulation.”
The Scientists
On March 10, David Bernstein stepped up to the podium at the Society of Toxicology’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and announced the results of his latest study. An American-born toxicologist based in Geneva, Bernstein began researching chrysotile in the late 1990s at the behest of a mine operator in Brazil. He was now reporting that rats exposed to chrysotile asbestos for five days, six hours a day, had shown no ill effects whatsoever. Rats exposed to brown amosite, a type of amphibole, hadn’t fared so well. The chrysotile fibers were cleared quickly from the animals’ lungs and caused “no pathological response at any point,” even though the exposure level was 50 percent higher than that for amosite, Bernstein said. The fibers have very different appearances under magnification. Chrysotile fibers look like ultrathin, rolled sheets; amosite and other amphiboles look like solid rods.
The sponsor of the as-yet unpublished study was Georgia-Pacific Corp. of Atlanta, which once made a ready-mix joint compound—a gooey white substance used to seal joints between sheets of drywall—that contained 5 percent chrysotile. Georgia-Pacific has been sued in the United States by a number of mesothelioma victims who claim they were exposed to asbestos while sanding the dried compound. Bernstein’s latest study, done in conjunction with Georgia-Pacific’s chief toxicologist, Stewart Holm, could be good news for the company.
Bernstein is the most active of a dozen or so industry-backed scientists who have helped fuel the asbestos trade by producing papers, lecturing, and testifying on the relative safety of chrysotile. The industry has spent tens of millions of dollars funding their studies, which have been cited some 5,000 times in the medical literature as well as by lobby groups from India to Canada. Bernstein’s work alone has been cited 460 times. He has been quoted or mentioned in Zimbabwe’s Financial Gazette, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and other publications around the world. His curriculum vitae suggests that he’s been a one-man road show for chrysotile, giving talks in 19 countries since 1999. Among his stops: Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. The industry paid for all of his travel, Bernstein told ICIJ in an interview.
Indeed, all of Bernstein’s work on asbestos has been underwritten by the industry, and he has become its principal defender at scientific meetings and in other venues. Bernstein says he has no idea how much all his studies have cost and emphasizes that, in any case, most of the money goes to the laboratory in Basel, Switzerland, where the animal experiments are performed. Court documents show that one sponsor, Union Carbide, paid $400,623 for work by Bernstein in 2003 and 2005.
In an interview in his hotel lobby the day before his presentation in Salt Lake City, Bernstein said that Georgia-Pacific in no way influenced his chrysotile research, nor have any of his other corporate sponsors. “I would work for any group,” Bernstein explained. “I have no limitations. Unfortunately, the groups that don’t like this work don’t ask me.” He decried the hyperbole surrounding chrysotile—“It’s a hysterical thing; it doesn’t come from science”—and said he doesn’t believe the fragile white fibers cause mesothelioma. They could cause lung cancer, he said, if exposures were extremely high.
The relevance of Bernstein’s rat experiments to humans is contested by fellow researchers. For example, an expert panel assembled by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that rodents clear short asbestos fibers from their lungs about 10 times faster than do people. Bernstein’s animals, moreover, were exposed over a relatively brief period of time. Many workers inhale asbestos over months or years, not days. “Not everyone exposed, even heavily, will necessarily develop disease, but data in the scientific literature show that as little as one day of exposure in man and animals can lead to mesothelioma, and a month or less of exposure in man doubles the risk of lung cancer,” says Dr. Arthur Frank, a physician and professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia.
If Bernstein is chrysotile’s scientific ambassador, then 92-year-old J. Corbett McDonald is its longest-tenured champion. He is the author of three dozen scientific papers on chrysotile, and his work has been cited in the medical literature nearly 1,500 times. In a telephone interview, McDonald said he was approached by the Canadian government in 1964to study asbestos miners and millersin Quebec; he, in turn, appealed to the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association for funding, which it agreed to provide. The impetus for the research, McDonald said, was a paper by Dr. Irving Selikoff of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine reporting that insulation workers with relatively light exposures to asbestos were dying of mesothelioma and other cancers at strikingly high rates.
A Lesson from Tobacco?
Minutes of the mining association’s November 1965 meeting, obtained by lawyers for asbestos victims, suggest that the group saw the tobacco industry as a paradigm: “The consensus of opinion seemed to point out that the QAMA should take into its hands the ways and means to conduct the necessary research instead of doing it through universities or letting it fall in the hands of the Government. As an example, it was recalled that the tobacco industry launched its own program and it now knows where it stands. Industry is always well advised to look after its own problems.”
Forty-five years later, McDonald remains resolute in his defense of asbestos. He says there is “very strong evidence” that contaminants in chrysotile, and not the chrysotile itself, caused excesses of mesothelioma among the Quebec workers. The toxic agent, he suspects, was tremolite, a type of amphibole. McDonald insists that his work was never influenced by the asbestos industry. Indeed, he wasn’t sure how much its leaders even cared about his work. “It used to worry us a bit that they took so little interest in the results,” he says.
McDonald’s tremolite theory—rebutted by studies of textile workers exposed to almost pure chrysotile, and just this year, a study of workers at a brake-lining factory—follows a pattern that Dr. David Egilman, a physician and clinical associate professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, calls ABC: anything but chrysotile. In fact, some researchers and defense lawyers have argued that mesothelioma could be triggered by a polio vaccine contaminated with a monkey virus. “Like the tobacco industry, they’ve been successful at manipulating scientific theories to confuse the public about the real risks of using asbestos,” says Egilman, who, like Frank and Castleman, testifies on behalf of plaintiffs in asbestos lawsuits.
Bernstein’s and McDonald’s studies have proved helpful to an industry under growing pressure to disband. Amphiboles such as the virulent blue crocidolite, which killed miners in South Africa for nearly two centuries before the nation imposed a ban in 2008, are virtually never encountered today. There are obvious economic incentives, skeptics say, to blame most of the asbestos disease in the past 50 years on obscure types of the mineral and imply that chrysotile, which accounts for 95 percent of all the asbestos ever used, is relatively benign.
“Is there a legitimate scientific question as to whether white asbestos is less dangerous [than blue or brown]? Yes,” Frank says. “But is it safe? No.”
Several key criticisms have been leveled at the researchers who defend chrysotile. They tend, for example, to focus on mesothelioma—the disease that comes up most often in litigation because it is considered a marker of asbestos exposure—and ignore lung cancer, which occurs more frequently. ”Chrysotile is just as potent [as amphiboles] in terms of lung cancer, and it might even be more potent,” says Peter Infante, former director of the Office of Standards Review at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They fixate on the amount of time chrysotile fibers spend in the lungs, failing to acknowledge that the fibers can do a figurative hit-and-run on cells, damaging DNA and precipitating cancer. And they buy into what WHO consultant Castleman calls the fallacy of controlled use—the idea that employers in the developing world are serious about dust suppression and ventilation.
Castleman has been researching asbestos cement substitutes—roofing and pipes made with cellulose fibers, ductile iron and fiberglass, for example—for the WHO and has determined that, at most, they cost 10 to 15 percent more to produce. By his reckoning, asbestos is not much of a bargain. “Obviously, the cost of death and disease and the eventual cost of even halfway properly managing asbestos cement structures wipes out any short-term savings of 10 to 15 percent,” Castleman says. As for another industry claim—that substitute products may be more dangerous than chrysotile—he notes, “They do not release carcinogenic dust whenever they are sawed, drilled, and demolished.”
Despite the reassuring studies and the million-dollar marketing efforts, the asbestos industry faces stiffening headwinds. The number of countries imposing bans or restrictions continues to climb, and groups of health and labor activists have sprung up in China, Brazil, India, and other high-use countries. The government of Canada, long considered a leader on environmental and health matters, has come under withering attack for pushing exports.
For his part, scientist Bernstein contends that his conclusion is the correct one: White asbestos can be used safely around the world. That the WHO, the European Union, and dozens of national governments disagree doesn’t bother him. “It’s not in my interest whether it’s the minority view or not,” Bernstein says. “I’ve always felt that science will prevail at the end.”
Jim Morris writes for the Center for Public Integrity, from where this article is adapted. Ana Avila in Mexico City, Dan Ettinger in Washington, D.C., Murali Krishnan in New Delhi, Roman Shleynov in Moscow, and Marcelo Soares in Sao Paulo contributed to this article.
7:27 AM
Letter to Union Environment Minister
Written By mediavigil on Saturday, July 24, 2010 | 7:27 AM
To
Mr. Jairam Ramesh,
Union Minister
Ministry of Environment & Forests
Government of India
Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110003
Subject-Seeking Appointment to Discuss Waste to Energy Plants in Residential Areas of Delhi
Sir,
Thank you for your letter dated 19th July along with a copy of NEERI report titled "Assessment and Remediation of Hazardous Waste Contaminated Areas in and around M/s Union Carbide India Ltd., Bhopal", I am going through it and share my comments shortly.
This letter is to seek an appointment to meet you with a small delegation from some Delhi based Residential Welfare Associations, environmental groups and waste recyclers in the matter of proposed waste to energy plants based on incineration technology in general and Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project in particular.
I had discussed this issue with you in person during my first meeting with you. You had expressed your awareness about the failed Timarpur waste to energy project. The same technology is once again being bulldozed in a residential area despite consistent resistance of residents, waste recyclers and environmental groups.
Unmindful of the environmental and human cost the installation of proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy plants in Ghazipur, Timarpur and Okhla, based on incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is being pursued. This compelled the residents to move to the Delhi High Court. Earlier, the matter came up for hearing on December 11, 2009 wherein the petitioners (Sukhdev Vihar Residents Welfare Association & others) pointed out the polluting nature of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Incineration technology and how both the central government and the Delhi government has misled the court. The court in its order has found that it was misled earlier which had led to it dismissing the petition which has now been restored and was heard most recently on 22nd July before the Delhi High Court. The court has summoned Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) for explanation. In the presence of A.S. Chandihok, Additional Solicitor General, the bench headed by the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court in an order dated 15th January observed, “that the project in question” and “the location of the pilot project in Delhi was neither recommended by the Expert Committee nor approved by the Supreme Court.” So far the court has passed six orders. (attached)
I wish to draw your urgent attention towards how Chief Minister of Delhi has turned a blind eye to Delhi High Court order which led to an inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the failure of the Timarpur plant that was also based on incineration technology (namely Refuse Derived Fuel) and the ‘White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan’ prepared by Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Chief Minister has been misled in to promoting it. The White Paper says, “The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed.”
I wish to inform you that the Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project that has met with protest rally from the residents of Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony and several others. Local politicians have also pledged their support for the protesters but to no avail. Over 600 people walked through the colonies in a procession to stage their protest. The proposed plant is located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies like Harkesh Nagar and Johori Farm, when the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas. Besides this the site is in proximity of hospitals like Holy Family, Fortis-Escorts and Apollo. Inhabitants of colonies like Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony are rightly alarmed at the prospect of a Dioxins emitting incinerator plant from coming up in their vicinity.
This has reference to the laying of foundation stone on June 26, 2010 by Mrs Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s Chief Minister for a polluting waste to energy plant in the residential area despite the experience of Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster in a residential area.
Delhi government and have been misled into promoting this dubious technology despite incontrovertible evidence against the technology and in spite of its explicit exclusion by the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan for Climate Change.
While no one will allow an incinerator based plant in one's own backyard or in one's own residential area, the same is being done by the Delhi Government. In an open letter to the Chief Minister which is attached for your perusal, the residents said, “This plant will emit large quantities of hazardous and toxic emissions (such as dioxins and furans) due to burning of Municipal Solid Waste, and will profoundly affect the health of the people living in the surrounding areas and environment for all times to come in future.”
I also wish draw your attention towards the sad plight at waste to energy site in Gandhamguda village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh (wrongly mentioned as Hyderabad project) which had the same technology. While the RDF incinerator was in operation, the village was covered by a heavy shroud of dark smoke. Originally a pelletisation plant with a furnace, After the plant came up, local doctors started detecting case of problems not found before — skin rashes, asthma, respiratory problems and some cases of stillborns. In a statement, Gandhamguda sarpanch D. Shakuntala had said: ‘‘Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchayat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with harmful pollutants and symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, asthma, miscariages, infertility.’’ Similar fate awaits residents of Delhi.
For misplaced carbon revenue, it would not be appropriate to turn Delhi residents as guinea pigs. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has an incorrect policy of subsidizing hazardous technologies like proposed incinerators.
Environmental groups, recycling workers and neighborhood residents are demanding closure of this combustion based project for a just transition from burning waste to building a better, cleaner future for the residents of Delhi. The transition is necessary in the face of issues such as the high cost of incineration, health effects of pollution in neighborhoods, and adverse climate change. Children suffer asthma rates three times the national average among other devastating health impacts.
This plant is based on a hazardous technology that receives fiscal incentives from MNRE. Notably, while 'whether or not energy from mixed municipal waste (with hazardous characteristics) is a driving concern' remains in dispute, the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) process which is a incineration technology and is a tried,tested, failed and Dioxins emitting technology.
Even Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s own Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Optimal Waste Treatment and Disposal for the Entire State of Delhi of March 2004 says, “Incineration of RDF is considered waste incineration.” (Page 25, Appendix D, Technology Catalogue). It also says the costs of RDF are often high for societies with low calorific value because energy is used to dry the waste before it becomes
feasible to burn it.
In fact the Master Plan Report (2020) of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) itself says,... “RDF is often an option when emission standards are lax and RDF is burned in conventional boilers with no special precautions for emissions.” One is surprised that despite this observation the report then goes on to suggest RDF. In fact the MCD report itself says that RDF is another form of incineration.
A 10 member Fact Finding Team visited the plant site on 18th June 2010 to take stock of the situation. Its preliminary findings are as follows: 1. RDF or incineration is completely inappropriate for Indian urban waste, which is largely biodegradable in nature. They extract a very high cost for the energy which they claim to generate. 2. The cost largely subsidised by various schemes, does not however include the environmental and health costs caused by their toxic releases, and which are externalized. 3. These technologies also use valuable resources which can be recycled, such as plastics and metals, and which support a massive recycling sector in the country. Indian municipal waste is fit for composting and bio-methanation treatment processes. 4. RDF is a thermal and combustion technology, mainly used to prepare waste for mass incineration. 5. If mixed waste is burnt will create problems of very toxic compounds such as dioxins and furans, heavy metals and other pollutants. 6. The calorific value for the waste comes from materials such as plastics and metals. 7. Plastics, especially chlorinated plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when combusted gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants and 8. PVC plastic combustion which is part of the mixed waste is banned in India by regulation both in the municipal and bio-medical waste handling rules.
Earlier residents had not allowed the land hand over ceremony for the project that is proposed in the residential area of Okhla but unmindful of the public protest, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) had permitted Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd to set up this plant. This company has secured a contract from New Delhi Waste Processing Company Limited, a joint venture between the Delhi Government and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), to produce 16 MW power from 2, 000 metric tonnes of municipal waste. Jindal company’s misplaced claims to that effect that it will process nearly 2000 tonnes of waste, later it would be in a position to process as much as 4,000 tonnes based on obsolete technology will distort capital city’s waste management beyond repair.
The proposed polluting technology to deal with the waste from South Delhi, North West Delhi and East Delhi is fraught with disastrous public health consequences for which two companies namely, Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (TOWMCL) and the Unique Waste Processing Company (subsidiary of IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited have been set up.
As per the agreement, BRPL will procure 50 per cent of the 16 MW electricity to be produced by TOWMCL at its plant in Okhla in the vicinity of numerous residential areas such as Sukhdev Vihar, Hazi Colony, Gaffar Manzil and others. The plant being set up plans to process over 6,43,500 lakh metric tonnes or one third of Delhi's Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year generated in Delhi. The plant is scheduled to be commissioned in late 2010-2011. Around 1,300 Tonnes Per Day (TPD) of MSW will be sourced from the Okhla landfill site and 650 TPD from Timarpur. BRPL will procure power at a DERC approved competitive tariff rate, determined by a competitive bidding process. The agreement allows the promoters to sell the remaining 50 per cent electricity through a suitable open access mechanism.
Similar waste to energy project is coming up at Ghazipur as well. Earlier, in November, 2009 BRPL had signed a 25-year-agreement to procure 49 per cent of the electricity generated from garbage to energy project at Ghazipur. Chief Minister referred to this project as well while laying the foundation stone.
East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle of the latter company is working for generating electricity at the Ghazipur site with the support of the Delhi Government. ‘New Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited’ a Joint Venture company of Delhi Government, IL&FS and APTTDC is supporting the project as well. The integrated municipal waste-processing complex is proposed to include a MSW processing plant at Ghazipur to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) along with a power plant of 10 MW capacity where the RDF derived from the waste will be used as fuel to produce electricity. It is supposed to handle an average 1300 tons per day. It claims that 111,949 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum of green house gases would be reduced. The crediting period for the project is from 1st November, 2010 to 31 October, 2020.
The Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project which was registered on 10th November, 2007 with a claim to reduce green house gases to the tune of 262,791 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum. Unique Waste Processing Company, a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Centre (APTDC) has incorporated Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company for developing the project for processing municipal waste and also to produce electricity at two locations namely Timarpur and Okhla, at the site at Okhla that is adjacent to defunct Okhla Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). TOWMCL is working with New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and MCD. The Timarpur and Okhla plant will together be processing 650 tonnes per day of MSW at Timarpur site and 1300 tonnes per day of MSW at Okhla and claims to generate 16 MW of electricity.
The move underway to install RDF plants in Delhi and several other state capitals is an environmentally unsustainable solution, which should be deemed unacceptable. If Delhi allows such toxic plant, it will set a bad precedent for other cities. It raises serious concerns about the health and safety of the citizens, which such a technology, will jeopardize.
In view of these grave concerns which Delhi residents, environmental groups and waste recyclers face, please grant us an appointment to meet you as a delegation and apprise of the situation at the earliest.
warm regards
Gopal Krishna
Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Website: www.toxicswatch.com
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
Mr. Jairam Ramesh,
Union Minister
Ministry of Environment & Forests
Government of India
Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110003
Subject-Seeking Appointment to Discuss Waste to Energy Plants in Residential Areas of Delhi
Sir,
Thank you for your letter dated 19th July along with a copy of NEERI report titled "Assessment and Remediation of Hazardous Waste Contaminated Areas in and around M/s Union Carbide India Ltd., Bhopal", I am going through it and share my comments shortly.
This letter is to seek an appointment to meet you with a small delegation from some Delhi based Residential Welfare Associations, environmental groups and waste recyclers in the matter of proposed waste to energy plants based on incineration technology in general and Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project in particular.
I had discussed this issue with you in person during my first meeting with you. You had expressed your awareness about the failed Timarpur waste to energy project. The same technology is once again being bulldozed in a residential area despite consistent resistance of residents, waste recyclers and environmental groups.
Unmindful of the environmental and human cost the installation of proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy plants in Ghazipur, Timarpur and Okhla, based on incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is being pursued. This compelled the residents to move to the Delhi High Court. Earlier, the matter came up for hearing on December 11, 2009 wherein the petitioners (Sukhdev Vihar Residents Welfare Association & others) pointed out the polluting nature of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Incineration technology and how both the central government and the Delhi government has misled the court. The court in its order has found that it was misled earlier which had led to it dismissing the petition which has now been restored and was heard most recently on 22nd July before the Delhi High Court. The court has summoned Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) for explanation. In the presence of A.S. Chandihok, Additional Solicitor General, the bench headed by the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court in an order dated 15th January observed, “that the project in question” and “the location of the pilot project in Delhi was neither recommended by the Expert Committee nor approved by the Supreme Court.” So far the court has passed six orders. (attached)
I wish to draw your urgent attention towards how Chief Minister of Delhi has turned a blind eye to Delhi High Court order which led to an inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the failure of the Timarpur plant that was also based on incineration technology (namely Refuse Derived Fuel) and the ‘White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan’ prepared by Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Chief Minister has been misled in to promoting it. The White Paper says, “The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed.”
I wish to inform you that the Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project that has met with protest rally from the residents of Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony and several others. Local politicians have also pledged their support for the protesters but to no avail. Over 600 people walked through the colonies in a procession to stage their protest. The proposed plant is located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies like Harkesh Nagar and Johori Farm, when the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas. Besides this the site is in proximity of hospitals like Holy Family, Fortis-Escorts and Apollo. Inhabitants of colonies like Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony are rightly alarmed at the prospect of a Dioxins emitting incinerator plant from coming up in their vicinity.
This has reference to the laying of foundation stone on June 26, 2010 by Mrs Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s Chief Minister for a polluting waste to energy plant in the residential area despite the experience of Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster in a residential area.
Delhi government and have been misled into promoting this dubious technology despite incontrovertible evidence against the technology and in spite of its explicit exclusion by the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan for Climate Change.
While no one will allow an incinerator based plant in one's own backyard or in one's own residential area, the same is being done by the Delhi Government. In an open letter to the Chief Minister which is attached for your perusal, the residents said, “This plant will emit large quantities of hazardous and toxic emissions (such as dioxins and furans) due to burning of Municipal Solid Waste, and will profoundly affect the health of the people living in the surrounding areas and environment for all times to come in future.”
I also wish draw your attention towards the sad plight at waste to energy site in Gandhamguda village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh (wrongly mentioned as Hyderabad project) which had the same technology. While the RDF incinerator was in operation, the village was covered by a heavy shroud of dark smoke. Originally a pelletisation plant with a furnace, After the plant came up, local doctors started detecting case of problems not found before — skin rashes, asthma, respiratory problems and some cases of stillborns. In a statement, Gandhamguda sarpanch D. Shakuntala had said: ‘‘Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchayat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with harmful pollutants and symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, asthma, miscariages, infertility.’’ Similar fate awaits residents of Delhi.
For misplaced carbon revenue, it would not be appropriate to turn Delhi residents as guinea pigs. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has an incorrect policy of subsidizing hazardous technologies like proposed incinerators.
Environmental groups, recycling workers and neighborhood residents are demanding closure of this combustion based project for a just transition from burning waste to building a better, cleaner future for the residents of Delhi. The transition is necessary in the face of issues such as the high cost of incineration, health effects of pollution in neighborhoods, and adverse climate change. Children suffer asthma rates three times the national average among other devastating health impacts.
This plant is based on a hazardous technology that receives fiscal incentives from MNRE. Notably, while 'whether or not energy from mixed municipal waste (with hazardous characteristics) is a driving concern' remains in dispute, the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) process which is a incineration technology and is a tried,tested, failed and Dioxins emitting technology.
Even Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s own Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Optimal Waste Treatment and Disposal for the Entire State of Delhi of March 2004 says, “Incineration of RDF is considered waste incineration.” (Page 25, Appendix D, Technology Catalogue). It also says the costs of RDF are often high for societies with low calorific value because energy is used to dry the waste before it becomes
feasible to burn it.
In fact the Master Plan Report (2020) of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) itself says,... “RDF is often an option when emission standards are lax and RDF is burned in conventional boilers with no special precautions for emissions.” One is surprised that despite this observation the report then goes on to suggest RDF. In fact the MCD report itself says that RDF is another form of incineration.
A 10 member Fact Finding Team visited the plant site on 18th June 2010 to take stock of the situation. Its preliminary findings are as follows: 1. RDF or incineration is completely inappropriate for Indian urban waste, which is largely biodegradable in nature. They extract a very high cost for the energy which they claim to generate. 2. The cost largely subsidised by various schemes, does not however include the environmental and health costs caused by their toxic releases, and which are externalized. 3. These technologies also use valuable resources which can be recycled, such as plastics and metals, and which support a massive recycling sector in the country. Indian municipal waste is fit for composting and bio-methanation treatment processes. 4. RDF is a thermal and combustion technology, mainly used to prepare waste for mass incineration. 5. If mixed waste is burnt will create problems of very toxic compounds such as dioxins and furans, heavy metals and other pollutants. 6. The calorific value for the waste comes from materials such as plastics and metals. 7. Plastics, especially chlorinated plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when combusted gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants and 8. PVC plastic combustion which is part of the mixed waste is banned in India by regulation both in the municipal and bio-medical waste handling rules.
Earlier residents had not allowed the land hand over ceremony for the project that is proposed in the residential area of Okhla but unmindful of the public protest, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) had permitted Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd to set up this plant. This company has secured a contract from New Delhi Waste Processing Company Limited, a joint venture between the Delhi Government and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), to produce 16 MW power from 2, 000 metric tonnes of municipal waste. Jindal company’s misplaced claims to that effect that it will process nearly 2000 tonnes of waste, later it would be in a position to process as much as 4,000 tonnes based on obsolete technology will distort capital city’s waste management beyond repair.
The proposed polluting technology to deal with the waste from South Delhi, North West Delhi and East Delhi is fraught with disastrous public health consequences for which two companies namely, Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (TOWMCL) and the Unique Waste Processing Company (subsidiary of IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited have been set up.
As per the agreement, BRPL will procure 50 per cent of the 16 MW electricity to be produced by TOWMCL at its plant in Okhla in the vicinity of numerous residential areas such as Sukhdev Vihar, Hazi Colony, Gaffar Manzil and others. The plant being set up plans to process over 6,43,500 lakh metric tonnes or one third of Delhi's Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year generated in Delhi. The plant is scheduled to be commissioned in late 2010-2011. Around 1,300 Tonnes Per Day (TPD) of MSW will be sourced from the Okhla landfill site and 650 TPD from Timarpur. BRPL will procure power at a DERC approved competitive tariff rate, determined by a competitive bidding process. The agreement allows the promoters to sell the remaining 50 per cent electricity through a suitable open access mechanism.
Similar waste to energy project is coming up at Ghazipur as well. Earlier, in November, 2009 BRPL had signed a 25-year-agreement to procure 49 per cent of the electricity generated from garbage to energy project at Ghazipur. Chief Minister referred to this project as well while laying the foundation stone.
East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle of the latter company is working for generating electricity at the Ghazipur site with the support of the Delhi Government. ‘New Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited’ a Joint Venture company of Delhi Government, IL&FS and APTTDC is supporting the project as well. The integrated municipal waste-processing complex is proposed to include a MSW processing plant at Ghazipur to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) along with a power plant of 10 MW capacity where the RDF derived from the waste will be used as fuel to produce electricity. It is supposed to handle an average 1300 tons per day. It claims that 111,949 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum of green house gases would be reduced. The crediting period for the project is from 1st November, 2010 to 31 October, 2020.
The Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project which was registered on 10th November, 2007 with a claim to reduce green house gases to the tune of 262,791 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum. Unique Waste Processing Company, a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Centre (APTDC) has incorporated Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company for developing the project for processing municipal waste and also to produce electricity at two locations namely Timarpur and Okhla, at the site at Okhla that is adjacent to defunct Okhla Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). TOWMCL is working with New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and MCD. The Timarpur and Okhla plant will together be processing 650 tonnes per day of MSW at Timarpur site and 1300 tonnes per day of MSW at Okhla and claims to generate 16 MW of electricity.
The move underway to install RDF plants in Delhi and several other state capitals is an environmentally unsustainable solution, which should be deemed unacceptable. If Delhi allows such toxic plant, it will set a bad precedent for other cities. It raises serious concerns about the health and safety of the citizens, which such a technology, will jeopardize.
In view of these grave concerns which Delhi residents, environmental groups and waste recyclers face, please grant us an appointment to meet you as a delegation and apprise of the situation at the earliest.
warm regards
Gopal Krishna
Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Website: www.toxicswatch.com
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
7:08 AM
Letter to Farooq Abdullah, Minister of New & Renewable Energy
Date: 20 July, 2010
To
Dr. Farooq Abdullah,
Union Cabinet Minister
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
Government of India
Block-14, CGO Complex,
Lodhi Road,New Delhi-110003
Subject-Seeking Appointment to Discuss Waste to Energy Plants in Residential Areas of Delhi
Sir,
This is to seek an appointment to meet you with a small delegation from Delhi based Residential Welfare Associations, environmental groups and waste recyclers in the matter of proposed waste to energy plants based on incineration technology in general and Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project in particular.
I wish to draw your attention towards the Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project that has met with protest rally from the residents of Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony together. Local politicians have also pledged their support for the protesters. Over 600 people walked through the colonies in a procession to stage their protest. The proposed plant is located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies like Harkesh Nagar and Johori Farm, when the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas. Besides this the site is in proximity of hospitals like Holy Family, Fortis-Escorts and Apollo. Inhabitants of colonies like Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony are rightly alarmed at the prospect of a Dioxins emitting incinerator plant from coming up in their vicinity.
This has reference to your reply dated December 11, 2009 in the Lok Sabha and laying of foundation stone on June 26, 2010 by Mrs Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s Chief Minister for a polluting waste to energy plant in the residential area despite the experience of Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster.
In your reply it was stated, “Our Ministry is implementing a programme for setting up five pilot projects on Energy recovery from municipal solid waste”. Initially, Delhi Government claimed in the Delhi High Court that it was one of the five projects you referred to in your reply, which the court later found to be not true.
Your Ministry and Delhi government and have been misled into promoting this dubious technology despite incontrovertible evidence against the technology and in spite of its explicit exclusion by the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan for Climate Change.
While no one will allow a incinerator based plant in one's own backyard or in one's own residential area, the same is being done by the Delhi Government and your Ministry. In an open letter to the Chief Minister which is attached for your perusal, the residents said, “This plant will emit large quantities of hazardous and toxic emissions (such as dioxins and furans) due to burning of Municipal Solid Waste, and will profoundly affect the health of the people living in the surrounding areas and environment for all times to come in future.”
Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) must take cognizance of the sad plight at waste to energy site in Gandhamguda village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh (wrongly mentioned as Hyderabad project) which had the same technology. While the RDF incinerator was in operation, the village was covered by a heavy shroud of dark smoke. Originally a pelletisation plant with a furnace, After the plant came up, local doctors started detecting case of problems not found before
— skin rashes, asthma, respiratory problems and some cases of stillborns. In a statement, Gandhamguda sarpanch D. Shakuntala had said: ‘‘Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchayat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with harmful pollutants and symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, asthma,
miscariages, infertility.’’ Similar fate awaits residents of Delhi.
For misplaced carbon revenue, it would not be appropriate to turn Delhi residents as guinea pigs. MNRE has an incorrect policy of subsidizing hazardous technologies like proposed incinerators.
Environmental groups, recycling workers and neighborhood residents are demanding closure of this combustion based project for a just transition from burning waste to building a better, cleaner future for the residents of Delhi. The transition is necessary in the face of issues such as the high cost of incineration, health effects of pollution in neighborhoods, and adverse climate change. Children suffer asthma rates three times the national average among other devastating health impacts.
This plant is based on a hazardous technology that receives fiscal incentives from Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). Notably, while 'whether or not energy from mixed municipal waste (with hazardous characteristics) is a driving concern' remains in dispute, the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological
treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) process which is a incineration technology and is a tried,tested, failed and Dioxins emitting technology.
Your Ministry and Delhi Chief Minister has turned a blind eye to Delhi High Court order which led to an inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the failure of the Timarpur plant that was also based on incineration technology (namely Refuse Derived Fuel) and the ‘White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan’ prepared by Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Chief
Minister has been misled in to promoting it. The White Paper says, “The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed.”
Even Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s own Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Optimal Waste Treatment and Disposal for the Entire State of Delhi of March 2004 says, “Incineration of RDF is considered waste incineration.” (Page 25, Appendix D, Technology Catalogue). It also says the costs of RDF are often high for societies with low calorific value because energy is used to dry the waste before it becomes
feasible to burn it.
In fact the Master Plan Report (2020) of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) itself says,... “RDF is often an option when emission standards are lax and RDF is burned in conventional boilers with no special precautions for emissions.” One is surprised that despite this observation the report then goes on to suggest RDF. In fact the MCD
report itself says that RDF is another form of incineration.
A 10 member Fact Finding Team visited the plant site on 18th June 2010 to take stock of the situation. Its preliminary findings are as follows: 1. RDF or incineration is completely inappropriate for Indian urban waste, which is largely biodegradable in nature. They extract a very high cost for the energy which they claim to generate. 2. The cost largely subsidised by various schemes, does not however include the environmental and health costs caused by their toxic releases, and which are externalized. 3. These technologies also use valuable resources which can be recycled, such as plastics and metals, and which support a massive recycling sector in the country. Indian municipal waste is fit for composting and bio-methanation treatment processes. 4. RDF is a thermal and combustion technology, mainly used
to prepare waste for mass incineration. 5. If mixed waste is burnt will create problems of very toxic compounds such as dioxins and furans, heavy metals and other pollutants. 6. The calorific value for the waste comes from materials such as plastics and metals. 7. Plastics, especially chlorinated plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when combusted gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants and
8. PVC plastic combustion which is part of the mixed waste is banned in India by regulation both in the municipal and bio-medical waste handling rules.
Earlier residents had not allowed the land hand over ceremony for the project that is proposed in the residential area of Okhla but unmindful of the public protest, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) had permitted Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd to set up this plant. This company has secured a contract from New Delhi Waste
Processing Company Limited, a joint venture between the Delhi Government and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), to produce 16 MW power from 2, 000 metric tonnes of municipal waste. Jindal company’s misplaced claims to that effect that it will process nearly 2000 tonnes of waste, later it would be in a position to process as much as 4,000 tonnes based on obsolete technology will
distort capital city’s waste management beyond repair.
The proposed polluting technology to deal with the waste from South Delhi, North West Delhi and East Delhi is fraught with disastrous public health consequences for which two companies namely, Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (TOWMCL) and the Unique Waste Processing Company (subsidiary of IL&FS Infrastructure Development
Corporation Limited have been set up.
As per the agreement, BRPL will procure 50 per cent of the 16 MW electricity to be produced by TOWMCL at its plant in Okhla in the vicinity of numerous residential areas such as Sukhdev Vihar, Hazi Colony, Gaffar Manzil and others. The plant being set up plans to process over 6,43,500 lakh metric tonnes or one third of Delhi's
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year generated in Delhi. The plant is scheduled to be commissioned in late 2010-2011. Around 1,300 Tonnes Per Day (TPD) of MSW will be sourced from the Okhla landfill site and 650 TPD from Timarpur. BRPL will procure power at a DERC approved competitive tariff rate, determined by a competitive bidding process. The agreement allows the promoters to sell the remaining 50 per cent
electricity through a suitable open access mechanism.
Similar waste to energy project is coming up at Ghazipur as well. Earlier, in November, 2009 BRPL had signed a 25-year-agreement to procure 49 per cent of the electricity generated from garbage to energy project at Ghazipur. Chief Minister referred to this project as well while laying the foundation stone.
Unmindful of the environmental and human cost the installation of proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy plants in Ghazipur, Timarpur and Okhla, based on incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is being pursued. This compelled the residents to move to the Delhi High Court. Earlier, the matter came up for hearing on December 11, 2009 wherein the petitioners (Sukhdev Vihar Residents Welfare
Association & others) pointed out the polluting nature of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Incineration technology and how both the central government and the Delhi government has misled the court. The court in its latest order has found that it was misled earlier which had led to it dismissing the petition which has now been restored and is scheduled for hearing on 22nd July before the Delhi High Court. In the presence of A.S. Chandihok, Additional Solicitor General, the bench headed by the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court in an order dated 15th January observed, “that the project in question” and “the location of the pilot project in Delhi was neither recommended by the Expert Committee nor approved by the Supreme Court.”
East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle of the latter company is working for generating electricity at the Ghazipur site with the support of the Delhi Government. ‘New Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited’ a Joint Venture company of Delhi Government, IL&FS and APTTDC is supporting the project as well. The integrated municipal waste-processing complex is proposed to
include a MSW processing plant at Ghazipur to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) along with a power plant of 10 MW capacity where the RDF derived from the waste will be used as fuel to produce electricity. It is supposed to handle an average 1300 tons per day. It claims that 111,949 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum of green house gases would be reduced. The crediting period for the project is from 1st
November, 2010 to 31 October, 2020.
The Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project which was registered on 10th November, 2007 with a claim to reduce green house gases to the tune of 262,791 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum. Unique Waste Processing Company, a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Centre (APTDC) has incorporated Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management
Company for developing the project for processing municipal waste and also to produce electricity at two locations namely Timarpur and Okhla, at the site at Okhla that is adjacent to defunct Okhla Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). TOWMCL is working with New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and MCD. The Timarpur and Okhla plant will together be processing 650 tonnes per day of MSW at Timarpur site and 1300 tonnes
per day of MSW at Okhla and claims to generate 16 MW of electricity.
The move underway to install RDF plants in Delhi and several other state capitals is an environmentally unsustainable solution, which should be deemed unacceptable. If Delhi allows such toxic plant, it will set a bad precedent for other cities. It raises serious concerns about the health and safety of the citizens, which such a technology, will jeopardize.
In view of these grave concerns which Delhi residents, environmental groups and waste recyclers face, please grant us an appointment to meet you as a delegation and apprise of the situation at the earliest.
warm regards
Gopal Krishna
Founder-Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Website: www.toxicswatch.com
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
To
Dr. Farooq Abdullah,
Union Cabinet Minister
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
Government of India
Block-14, CGO Complex,
Lodhi Road,New Delhi-110003
Subject-Seeking Appointment to Discuss Waste to Energy Plants in Residential Areas of Delhi
Sir,
This is to seek an appointment to meet you with a small delegation from Delhi based Residential Welfare Associations, environmental groups and waste recyclers in the matter of proposed waste to energy plants based on incineration technology in general and Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project in particular.
I wish to draw your attention towards the Timarpur-Okhla Waste to Energy project that has met with protest rally from the residents of Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony together. Local politicians have also pledged their support for the protesters. Over 600 people walked through the colonies in a procession to stage their protest. The proposed plant is located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies like Harkesh Nagar and Johori Farm, when the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas. Besides this the site is in proximity of hospitals like Holy Family, Fortis-Escorts and Apollo. Inhabitants of colonies like Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony are rightly alarmed at the prospect of a Dioxins emitting incinerator plant from coming up in their vicinity.
This has reference to your reply dated December 11, 2009 in the Lok Sabha and laying of foundation stone on June 26, 2010 by Mrs Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s Chief Minister for a polluting waste to energy plant in the residential area despite the experience of Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster.
In your reply it was stated, “Our Ministry is implementing a programme for setting up five pilot projects on Energy recovery from municipal solid waste”. Initially, Delhi Government claimed in the Delhi High Court that it was one of the five projects you referred to in your reply, which the court later found to be not true.
Your Ministry and Delhi government and have been misled into promoting this dubious technology despite incontrovertible evidence against the technology and in spite of its explicit exclusion by the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan for Climate Change.
While no one will allow a incinerator based plant in one's own backyard or in one's own residential area, the same is being done by the Delhi Government and your Ministry. In an open letter to the Chief Minister which is attached for your perusal, the residents said, “This plant will emit large quantities of hazardous and toxic emissions (such as dioxins and furans) due to burning of Municipal Solid Waste, and will profoundly affect the health of the people living in the surrounding areas and environment for all times to come in future.”
Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) must take cognizance of the sad plight at waste to energy site in Gandhamguda village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh (wrongly mentioned as Hyderabad project) which had the same technology. While the RDF incinerator was in operation, the village was covered by a heavy shroud of dark smoke. Originally a pelletisation plant with a furnace, After the plant came up, local doctors started detecting case of problems not found before
— skin rashes, asthma, respiratory problems and some cases of stillborns. In a statement, Gandhamguda sarpanch D. Shakuntala had said: ‘‘Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchayat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with harmful pollutants and symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, asthma,
miscariages, infertility.’’ Similar fate awaits residents of Delhi.
For misplaced carbon revenue, it would not be appropriate to turn Delhi residents as guinea pigs. MNRE has an incorrect policy of subsidizing hazardous technologies like proposed incinerators.
Environmental groups, recycling workers and neighborhood residents are demanding closure of this combustion based project for a just transition from burning waste to building a better, cleaner future for the residents of Delhi. The transition is necessary in the face of issues such as the high cost of incineration, health effects of pollution in neighborhoods, and adverse climate change. Children suffer asthma rates three times the national average among other devastating health impacts.
This plant is based on a hazardous technology that receives fiscal incentives from Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). Notably, while 'whether or not energy from mixed municipal waste (with hazardous characteristics) is a driving concern' remains in dispute, the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological
treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) process which is a incineration technology and is a tried,tested, failed and Dioxins emitting technology.
Your Ministry and Delhi Chief Minister has turned a blind eye to Delhi High Court order which led to an inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the failure of the Timarpur plant that was also based on incineration technology (namely Refuse Derived Fuel) and the ‘White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan’ prepared by Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Chief
Minister has been misled in to promoting it. The White Paper says, “The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed.”
Even Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s own Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Optimal Waste Treatment and Disposal for the Entire State of Delhi of March 2004 says, “Incineration of RDF is considered waste incineration.” (Page 25, Appendix D, Technology Catalogue). It also says the costs of RDF are often high for societies with low calorific value because energy is used to dry the waste before it becomes
feasible to burn it.
In fact the Master Plan Report (2020) of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) itself says,... “RDF is often an option when emission standards are lax and RDF is burned in conventional boilers with no special precautions for emissions.” One is surprised that despite this observation the report then goes on to suggest RDF. In fact the MCD
report itself says that RDF is another form of incineration.
A 10 member Fact Finding Team visited the plant site on 18th June 2010 to take stock of the situation. Its preliminary findings are as follows: 1. RDF or incineration is completely inappropriate for Indian urban waste, which is largely biodegradable in nature. They extract a very high cost for the energy which they claim to generate. 2. The cost largely subsidised by various schemes, does not however include the environmental and health costs caused by their toxic releases, and which are externalized. 3. These technologies also use valuable resources which can be recycled, such as plastics and metals, and which support a massive recycling sector in the country. Indian municipal waste is fit for composting and bio-methanation treatment processes. 4. RDF is a thermal and combustion technology, mainly used
to prepare waste for mass incineration. 5. If mixed waste is burnt will create problems of very toxic compounds such as dioxins and furans, heavy metals and other pollutants. 6. The calorific value for the waste comes from materials such as plastics and metals. 7. Plastics, especially chlorinated plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when combusted gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants and
8. PVC plastic combustion which is part of the mixed waste is banned in India by regulation both in the municipal and bio-medical waste handling rules.
Earlier residents had not allowed the land hand over ceremony for the project that is proposed in the residential area of Okhla but unmindful of the public protest, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) had permitted Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd to set up this plant. This company has secured a contract from New Delhi Waste
Processing Company Limited, a joint venture between the Delhi Government and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), to produce 16 MW power from 2, 000 metric tonnes of municipal waste. Jindal company’s misplaced claims to that effect that it will process nearly 2000 tonnes of waste, later it would be in a position to process as much as 4,000 tonnes based on obsolete technology will
distort capital city’s waste management beyond repair.
The proposed polluting technology to deal with the waste from South Delhi, North West Delhi and East Delhi is fraught with disastrous public health consequences for which two companies namely, Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (TOWMCL) and the Unique Waste Processing Company (subsidiary of IL&FS Infrastructure Development
Corporation Limited have been set up.
As per the agreement, BRPL will procure 50 per cent of the 16 MW electricity to be produced by TOWMCL at its plant in Okhla in the vicinity of numerous residential areas such as Sukhdev Vihar, Hazi Colony, Gaffar Manzil and others. The plant being set up plans to process over 6,43,500 lakh metric tonnes or one third of Delhi's
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) per year generated in Delhi. The plant is scheduled to be commissioned in late 2010-2011. Around 1,300 Tonnes Per Day (TPD) of MSW will be sourced from the Okhla landfill site and 650 TPD from Timarpur. BRPL will procure power at a DERC approved competitive tariff rate, determined by a competitive bidding process. The agreement allows the promoters to sell the remaining 50 per cent
electricity through a suitable open access mechanism.
Similar waste to energy project is coming up at Ghazipur as well. Earlier, in November, 2009 BRPL had signed a 25-year-agreement to procure 49 per cent of the electricity generated from garbage to energy project at Ghazipur. Chief Minister referred to this project as well while laying the foundation stone.
Unmindful of the environmental and human cost the installation of proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy plants in Ghazipur, Timarpur and Okhla, based on incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is being pursued. This compelled the residents to move to the Delhi High Court. Earlier, the matter came up for hearing on December 11, 2009 wherein the petitioners (Sukhdev Vihar Residents Welfare
Association & others) pointed out the polluting nature of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Incineration technology and how both the central government and the Delhi government has misled the court. The court in its latest order has found that it was misled earlier which had led to it dismissing the petition which has now been restored and is scheduled for hearing on 22nd July before the Delhi High Court. In the presence of A.S. Chandihok, Additional Solicitor General, the bench headed by the Chief Justice, Delhi High Court in an order dated 15th January observed, “that the project in question” and “the location of the pilot project in Delhi was neither recommended by the Expert Committee nor approved by the Supreme Court.”
East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle of the latter company is working for generating electricity at the Ghazipur site with the support of the Delhi Government. ‘New Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited’ a Joint Venture company of Delhi Government, IL&FS and APTTDC is supporting the project as well. The integrated municipal waste-processing complex is proposed to
include a MSW processing plant at Ghazipur to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) along with a power plant of 10 MW capacity where the RDF derived from the waste will be used as fuel to produce electricity. It is supposed to handle an average 1300 tons per day. It claims that 111,949 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum of green house gases would be reduced. The crediting period for the project is from 1st
November, 2010 to 31 October, 2020.
The Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project which was registered on 10th November, 2007 with a claim to reduce green house gases to the tune of 262,791 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum. Unique Waste Processing Company, a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Centre (APTDC) has incorporated Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management
Company for developing the project for processing municipal waste and also to produce electricity at two locations namely Timarpur and Okhla, at the site at Okhla that is adjacent to defunct Okhla Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). TOWMCL is working with New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and MCD. The Timarpur and Okhla plant will together be processing 650 tonnes per day of MSW at Timarpur site and 1300 tonnes
per day of MSW at Okhla and claims to generate 16 MW of electricity.
The move underway to install RDF plants in Delhi and several other state capitals is an environmentally unsustainable solution, which should be deemed unacceptable. If Delhi allows such toxic plant, it will set a bad precedent for other cities. It raises serious concerns about the health and safety of the citizens, which such a technology, will jeopardize.
In view of these grave concerns which Delhi residents, environmental groups and waste recyclers face, please grant us an appointment to meet you as a delegation and apprise of the situation at the earliest.
warm regards
Gopal Krishna
Founder-Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Website: www.toxicswatch.com
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
1:38 AM
At Any Cost?
Written By mediavigil on Friday, July 23, 2010 | 1:38 AM
At Any Cost? The hidden costs of charging for public transport
Today's piece by Alex Berthelsen of Planka.nu, Sweden's largest public transport NGO, is part of World Streets wide-open international brainstorming series on "free public transport". The most recent article in this series appeared here last week under the title " Why Free Public Transport is a bad idea", inviting our readers to share their critical thoughts on this important, contentious but ultimately quite subtile subject. The flood gates immediately opened and within days we heard a variety of responses, negative and positive, from thirty readers logging in from more than a dozen different countries. You can access their comments and all the articles in this series via http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/free-public-transport/. And as always your critical comments and suggestions are welcome.
At Any Cost? The hidden costs of charging for public transport
There are a lot of obvious advantages that free public transport has to offer. But one that is often overlooked is the savings that can be made by not having to sell, validate and check tickets. Many public transport operators does not know what it costs them to uphold their fare-system, and some of them does not even admit that it is a cost. “It’s such a small amount of money that it’s not even worth counting,” is a reply you might get if asking a public transport operator about their costs associated with having fares.
In Stockholm, Sweden, this was the question asked, and the public transport operator, SL, gave the standard reply, so the organisation I work with, Planka.nu (Sweden's biggest public transport NGO), started to count and measure as many things as we could come up with that were associated with having fares in the public transport. The result was quite shocking, even for such free public transport advocates as us.
It is important to remember that the costs of having a fare-system are more than just the direct expenses such as tickets, vending machines, personnel, and barriers. Things such as queues, unsatisfied customers and violence are also costs directly associated with having fares, even though they are harder to measure in economic terms. Below I will go through a few of the biggest costs of the ticket system in the Stockholm public transport system, to give you a clue to what we could save by making the public transport free at the point of entry.
The Barriers
The barriers in the public transport system in Stockholm takes up well over 2700 square meters of valuable station space, space that could be exploited commercially or used for such nice things as bigger resting spaces for the workers or for putting up “cultural billboards”. Besides this the barriers costs about 2 million € per year in maintenance and 5 million € per year in reinvestment.
The barriers, and the mandatory showing of tickets to the bus driver creates unnecessary queues, bottlenecks and are an endless source of irritation for both the commuters and the workers in the public transport. According to the public transport operator in Stockholm, the queues are “not even worth measuring”, but we did it anyways. On bus line 4 which runs through central Stockholm the time wasted on checking tickets adds up to 35 (yes, thirty-five) percent of the total time the bus is operated. On the Stockholm Central station, the productivity loss of people queuing amounts to more than 3 million € per year, imagine how much money the loss would be if measured across the whole system and not just on one station!
The Workforce
By using the existing workforce, but giving them tasks that are meaningful for both them as well as the commuters we could switch personnel from pointless tasks such as guarding barriers and checking tickets into meaningful jobs such as helping commuters with information, or driving buses and trains. The total amount of money we could spend on people doing good instead of pointless things would be 40 million € per year, this would be a direct gain for the public transport and these 40 million € should be counted as an expenditure solely associated with the fare-system.
By making the public transport free we are also effectively getting rid of a lot of situations where violence occur. According to the public transport union in Stockholm, a majority of all reported threats and incidents of violence directed at workers are connected to the fare system, and according to the public transport ombudsman, almost all threats and incidents of violence directed at passengers are exercised by the personnel involved in selling and checking ticket. The value of reducing violence between passengers and personnel might be a bit hard to measure in economic terms, because it is priceless!
The Math
In this article I have shown that over 45 million € per year is wasted on the fare-system in the public transport in Stockholm, and this is not counting negative externalities such as queues, more people driving cars, unsatisfied costumers, violence, etc. 45 million € is around 10 percent of the total income from selling tickets in Stockholm, but that is obviously "not even worth counting" according to the public transport operator. Talk about disrespect for how they use the commuters hard-earned money!
Imagine a company or NGO that did not know their income and expenditures! This is, unfortunately, quite common in the glorious world of public transport. Instead of maximizing the public good that the public transport should be, our public transport operators are busy with finding new and innovative ways of trying to maximise their income by selling more and more expensive tickets to people who are just doing the right thing and choosing an exemplary means of transportation.
There are some good examples though, where public transport operators have actually studied the costs of selling tickets. One of those is Island Transit on the Whidbey and Camano islands in Washington. Before they opened their systems they did the math and realized that the costs of selling tickets would be approximately the same as the income from selling tickets. So they decided to make their system fare-free instead.
When faced with the arguments for free public transport, many people respond by saying that it should not be free, but that it should be much cheaper. The problem with that argument is that if you make the public transport cheaper, an even larger share of the income from tickets will go directly to upholding the fare-system. This problem creates a situation where you either have expensive tickets, fewer users and a smaller share of the income going to upholding the fare-system, or cheap tickets, more users and a larger share of the income lost on selling tickets.
Against this I can only put the proposal of making the public transport free, something that would both mean more riders filling up the current empty seats as well as no money wasted on the fare-system -- in the words of Irwin Kellner, chief economist for MarketWatch (a part of the Wall Street Journal), free public transport would be “a win-win solution, if I ever saw one.”
# # #
About the author:
Alexander Berthelsen is editor of Carbusters Magazine. He's a Swede currently living in Prague, Czech Republic where he's doing a one-year internship at World Carfree Network. Back in Sweden he's active in Planka.nu for whom he, amongst other things, wrote a report in Swedish on "At Any Cost?" last year. (This article is based on the Swedish report "Till varje pris?" ("At any cost?") released in March 2009. http://planka.nu/vad-tycker-vi/rapporter/till-varje-pris.). He can be reached via alexander.berthelsen@gmail.com or http://twitter.com/alexberthelsen.
Planka.nu is Sweden's largest public transport NGO, they started up in 2001 as free public transport activists but has since expanded their work into many different areas of urban politics. They just released their second English report "The Traffic Hierarchy". URL: http://planka.nu Email: sthlm@planka.nu
Source:
World Streets
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-any-cost-hidden-costs-of-charging.html
Today's piece by Alex Berthelsen of Planka.nu, Sweden's largest public transport NGO, is part of World Streets wide-open international brainstorming series on "free public transport". The most recent article in this series appeared here last week under the title " Why Free Public Transport is a bad idea", inviting our readers to share their critical thoughts on this important, contentious but ultimately quite subtile subject. The flood gates immediately opened and within days we heard a variety of responses, negative and positive, from thirty readers logging in from more than a dozen different countries. You can access their comments and all the articles in this series via http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/free-public-transport/. And as always your critical comments and suggestions are welcome.
At Any Cost? The hidden costs of charging for public transport
There are a lot of obvious advantages that free public transport has to offer. But one that is often overlooked is the savings that can be made by not having to sell, validate and check tickets. Many public transport operators does not know what it costs them to uphold their fare-system, and some of them does not even admit that it is a cost. “It’s such a small amount of money that it’s not even worth counting,” is a reply you might get if asking a public transport operator about their costs associated with having fares.
In Stockholm, Sweden, this was the question asked, and the public transport operator, SL, gave the standard reply, so the organisation I work with, Planka.nu (Sweden's biggest public transport NGO), started to count and measure as many things as we could come up with that were associated with having fares in the public transport. The result was quite shocking, even for such free public transport advocates as us.
It is important to remember that the costs of having a fare-system are more than just the direct expenses such as tickets, vending machines, personnel, and barriers. Things such as queues, unsatisfied customers and violence are also costs directly associated with having fares, even though they are harder to measure in economic terms. Below I will go through a few of the biggest costs of the ticket system in the Stockholm public transport system, to give you a clue to what we could save by making the public transport free at the point of entry.
The Barriers
The barriers in the public transport system in Stockholm takes up well over 2700 square meters of valuable station space, space that could be exploited commercially or used for such nice things as bigger resting spaces for the workers or for putting up “cultural billboards”. Besides this the barriers costs about 2 million € per year in maintenance and 5 million € per year in reinvestment.
The barriers, and the mandatory showing of tickets to the bus driver creates unnecessary queues, bottlenecks and are an endless source of irritation for both the commuters and the workers in the public transport. According to the public transport operator in Stockholm, the queues are “not even worth measuring”, but we did it anyways. On bus line 4 which runs through central Stockholm the time wasted on checking tickets adds up to 35 (yes, thirty-five) percent of the total time the bus is operated. On the Stockholm Central station, the productivity loss of people queuing amounts to more than 3 million € per year, imagine how much money the loss would be if measured across the whole system and not just on one station!
The Workforce
By using the existing workforce, but giving them tasks that are meaningful for both them as well as the commuters we could switch personnel from pointless tasks such as guarding barriers and checking tickets into meaningful jobs such as helping commuters with information, or driving buses and trains. The total amount of money we could spend on people doing good instead of pointless things would be 40 million € per year, this would be a direct gain for the public transport and these 40 million € should be counted as an expenditure solely associated with the fare-system.
By making the public transport free we are also effectively getting rid of a lot of situations where violence occur. According to the public transport union in Stockholm, a majority of all reported threats and incidents of violence directed at workers are connected to the fare system, and according to the public transport ombudsman, almost all threats and incidents of violence directed at passengers are exercised by the personnel involved in selling and checking ticket. The value of reducing violence between passengers and personnel might be a bit hard to measure in economic terms, because it is priceless!
The Math
In this article I have shown that over 45 million € per year is wasted on the fare-system in the public transport in Stockholm, and this is not counting negative externalities such as queues, more people driving cars, unsatisfied costumers, violence, etc. 45 million € is around 10 percent of the total income from selling tickets in Stockholm, but that is obviously "not even worth counting" according to the public transport operator. Talk about disrespect for how they use the commuters hard-earned money!
Imagine a company or NGO that did not know their income and expenditures! This is, unfortunately, quite common in the glorious world of public transport. Instead of maximizing the public good that the public transport should be, our public transport operators are busy with finding new and innovative ways of trying to maximise their income by selling more and more expensive tickets to people who are just doing the right thing and choosing an exemplary means of transportation.
There are some good examples though, where public transport operators have actually studied the costs of selling tickets. One of those is Island Transit on the Whidbey and Camano islands in Washington. Before they opened their systems they did the math and realized that the costs of selling tickets would be approximately the same as the income from selling tickets. So they decided to make their system fare-free instead.
When faced with the arguments for free public transport, many people respond by saying that it should not be free, but that it should be much cheaper. The problem with that argument is that if you make the public transport cheaper, an even larger share of the income from tickets will go directly to upholding the fare-system. This problem creates a situation where you either have expensive tickets, fewer users and a smaller share of the income going to upholding the fare-system, or cheap tickets, more users and a larger share of the income lost on selling tickets.
Against this I can only put the proposal of making the public transport free, something that would both mean more riders filling up the current empty seats as well as no money wasted on the fare-system -- in the words of Irwin Kellner, chief economist for MarketWatch (a part of the Wall Street Journal), free public transport would be “a win-win solution, if I ever saw one.”
# # #
About the author:
Alexander Berthelsen is editor of Carbusters Magazine. He's a Swede currently living in Prague, Czech Republic where he's doing a one-year internship at World Carfree Network. Back in Sweden he's active in Planka.nu for whom he, amongst other things, wrote a report in Swedish on "At Any Cost?" last year. (This article is based on the Swedish report "Till varje pris?" ("At any cost?") released in March 2009. http://planka.nu/vad-tycker-vi/rapporter/till-varje-pris.). He can be reached via alexander.berthelsen@gmail.com or http://twitter.com/alexberthelsen.
Planka.nu is Sweden's largest public transport NGO, they started up in 2001 as free public transport activists but has since expanded their work into many different areas of urban politics. They just released their second English report "The Traffic Hierarchy". URL: http://planka.nu Email: sthlm@planka.nu
Source:
World Streets
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-any-cost-hidden-costs-of-charging.html
10:47 AM
Adil Shahryar, Anderson Swap Deal?
Written By mediavigil on Sunday, July 18, 2010 | 10:47 AM
Rajiv Gandhi government had allowed Anderson to flee as a quid pro quo arrangement with US on giving a presidential pardon to one Adil Shahryar.
Adil's father Muhammad Yunus, former Indian Ambassador to Spain and long time Chairman of the Trade Fair Authority of India was close to the Gandhi family. Adil, who was given a federal sentence of 35 years in prison for various crimes, was given a presidential pardon by US president Ronald Reagan on June 11, 1985.
See, e.g., Exec. Grant of Clemency to Adil Shahryar (June 11, 1985) (son of aide to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, serving 35-year federal sentence for explosives and fraud offenses, freed as “goodwill gesture” on occasion of Gandhi’s visit to U.S.) U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, OFFICE OF THE PARDON ATTORNEY, WARRANTS OF PARDON,
1935-1999.
Letter from US Attorney General Winiam French Smith to Charlton Heston, August 27, 1982, concerning Adil Shahryar.
Hollywood actor Charlton Heston wrote to Attorney General William French Smith in 1982 asking him to intervene in the case of a friend's son (Adil Shahryar) who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for trying to blow up a ship, the assignment was given to Mr. Smith's special assistant, John G. Roberts Jr.
According to recently released government documents, Mr. Roberts reviewed the case and prepared a memorandum explaining that Mr. Heston's version of it was incomplete if not incorrect. He drafted the ''Dear Chuck'' letter from Mr. Smith that constituted a polite but firm brushoff to Mr. Heston, who was an acquaintance of Mr. Smith.
Shahryar was arrested by the US anti-corruption department on charges of importing illegal substance and put in US prison for felony.
Adil was tried in federal court, before a jury, on five counts: (1) attempting to firebomb a ship; (2) false statements on various certificates in connection with the shipment; (3) mail fraud; (4) making of a firearm (the bombs); and (5) use of a firearm (the bombs) in the commission of a felony.
The case was airtight: evidence linked Adil to the purchase of the bomb materials, and he had only an incredible story attempting to pin the blame on two associates to present in defense. He was convicted and sentenced, after a sentencing hearing, to 35 years. The judge indicated he viewed the attempted firebombing of the ship as very serious. Adil had what the prosecutor described as a "superb" defense attorney
during the trial, though Adil fired him before the sentencing hearing. The assistant U.S. attorney who tried the case concluded that Adil was "dangerous and deserves every day of the 35 years he got."
Adil was subsequently convicted by Federal Judge Jarmes Kehoe on May 17, 1982 in five cases to consecutive terms totalling 35 years.
Correspondence from Charlton Heston Concerning Criminal Conviction of Adil Shahryar dated August 9, 1982 and August 17, 1982
Adil was released six months and four days after Warren Anderson was let go on 25,000 rupees bail by the Congress led Government of India on December 7th 1984.
Adil's father Muhammad Yunus, former Indian Ambassador to Spain and long time Chairman of the Trade Fair Authority of India was close to the Gandhi family. Adil, who was given a federal sentence of 35 years in prison for various crimes, was given a presidential pardon by US president Ronald Reagan on June 11, 1985.
See, e.g., Exec. Grant of Clemency to Adil Shahryar (June 11, 1985) (son of aide to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, serving 35-year federal sentence for explosives and fraud offenses, freed as “goodwill gesture” on occasion of Gandhi’s visit to U.S.) U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, OFFICE OF THE PARDON ATTORNEY, WARRANTS OF PARDON,
1935-1999.
Letter from US Attorney General Winiam French Smith to Charlton Heston, August 27, 1982, concerning Adil Shahryar.
Hollywood actor Charlton Heston wrote to Attorney General William French Smith in 1982 asking him to intervene in the case of a friend's son (Adil Shahryar) who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for trying to blow up a ship, the assignment was given to Mr. Smith's special assistant, John G. Roberts Jr.
According to recently released government documents, Mr. Roberts reviewed the case and prepared a memorandum explaining that Mr. Heston's version of it was incomplete if not incorrect. He drafted the ''Dear Chuck'' letter from Mr. Smith that constituted a polite but firm brushoff to Mr. Heston, who was an acquaintance of Mr. Smith.
Shahryar was arrested by the US anti-corruption department on charges of importing illegal substance and put in US prison for felony.
Adil was tried in federal court, before a jury, on five counts: (1) attempting to firebomb a ship; (2) false statements on various certificates in connection with the shipment; (3) mail fraud; (4) making of a firearm (the bombs); and (5) use of a firearm (the bombs) in the commission of a felony.
The case was airtight: evidence linked Adil to the purchase of the bomb materials, and he had only an incredible story attempting to pin the blame on two associates to present in defense. He was convicted and sentenced, after a sentencing hearing, to 35 years. The judge indicated he viewed the attempted firebombing of the ship as very serious. Adil had what the prosecutor described as a "superb" defense attorney
during the trial, though Adil fired him before the sentencing hearing. The assistant U.S. attorney who tried the case concluded that Adil was "dangerous and deserves every day of the 35 years he got."
Adil was subsequently convicted by Federal Judge Jarmes Kehoe on May 17, 1982 in five cases to consecutive terms totalling 35 years.
Correspondence from Charlton Heston Concerning Criminal Conviction of Adil Shahryar dated August 9, 1982 and August 17, 1982
Adil was released six months and four days after Warren Anderson was let go on 25,000 rupees bail by the Congress led Government of India on December 7th 1984.
4:36 AM
Submission on Liability from Damage Bill 2010 to Parliamentary Standing Committee
Written By mediavigil on Wednesday, July 07, 2010 | 4:36 AM
To
Dr. T. Subbarami Reddy,
The Chairman,
&
Members of
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests,
New Delhi
Sub: Submission on 'Liability for Damage Bill 2010'
Ref.: Public Notification dated June 24 2010 (Re.:)
Dear Dr. Reddy and Members of the Committee,
With reference to your public notification inviting comments from the members of the general public, the following submission is made.
I submit that the move to introduce the Nuclear Liability Bill is a pre-condition for the entry of US companies in the Indian civil nuclear sector.
I am alarmed at the swiftness with which the Bill is being introduced to facilitate the entry of US nuclear power companies into India.
I submit that one of the biggest myths being propagated is that nuclear cooperation with the US is the answer to India's energy crisis, which in any case would not see the light of the day before 2016.
I wish to state that Indian Parliament and citizens have been kept in the dark about the cost of electricity from foreign-built nuclear power reactors.
Unmindful of the fact that all the countries that produce nuclear energy are facing a crisis in the management of nuclear wastes, India is taking the same route, that too with a plan of 25k megawatt by 2020.
I wish to draw your attention to an interview conducted by EG Weymouth, editor-at-Large of Newsweek, on November 16, 2009, wherein Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: 'We had a watershed and a landmark agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation. We would like to operationalise it and ensure that the objectives for the nuclear deal are realised in full merit. My sincere hope is that we can persuade the US administration to be more liberal when it comes to transfer of dual-use technologies to us. Now that we are strategic partners these restrictions make no sense. India has an impeccable record of not participating in any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. So, that is my number one concern.'
This was in reference to the consent agreement that the US President would have to sign and send to the US Congress. Responding to the question about the need for Indian Parliament to pass a liability agreement in the matter of nuclear cooperation with US, the prime minister said: 'We will do that. Our Cabinet will be taking a decision. I do not see any difficulties in honouring our commitments.'
Notably, when the prime minister was asked about the specific role of the Indian Parliament, he appears to have highlighted the Union Cabinet.
On October 1, 2008, the Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Non-Proliferation Enhancement Act came into effect after the US Senate passed it. While the role of the US legislature is quite manifest, the Indian Parliament has not been allowed any role to play, not even to examine the deal's provisions, and now wants the Indian legislature to pass a special law to provide foreign companies with liability protection in case of nuclear accidents.
This is being done because US nuclear companies, which are in the private sector, are demanding it. As you are aware so far in India, our nuclear companies, quite like the French and Russians, are State-owned.
I submit that The Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill is an exercise to provide State subsidy to foreign-nuclear reactor builders from the onus of the financial consequences of nuclear disasters, accidents and incidents by shifting the onus for accident liability from the foreign builders to the Indian State and citizens.
The Bill does not provide any evidence that it has taken lessons from The Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania led to 14 years of clean-up costing $1 billion.
The US interests are seeking to avoid open market competition by their companies. Although the US assumes liability for any nuclear catastrophic damages from an accident only above the $10.5 billion figure that is inflation-adjusted every five years and thus variable, which itself is quite low, through its machinations it denies India even that relief which it provides to its own companies.
I submit that the Bill must be revisited in the light of the international nuclear accidents the world over.
I wish to draw your considered attention towards what Peter Mason, president and chief executive of nuclear supplier GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada while explaining to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Canadian House of Commons on Natural Resources that is dealing with Bill C-20, their Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, November 2009. He said, "If there was not a cap and if there was no suitable legislation insurance in place, then we wouldn't be in the nuclear industry".
The Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2009 is ridden with glaring loopholes and booby traps because it insulates nuclear energy companies from punitive legal consequences.
The Bill seems to pretend the non-existence of the report of the US President's Commission on The Accident at Three Mile Island that happened in 1979.
I submit that to begin with it should be renamed as Liability from Nuclear Damage Bill and it must explicitly inform Parliament and the citizens what all lessons from that report has been incorporated in the Bill.
Mere civil liability is totally unacceptable because clearly it has not factored in all the nuclear accidents which have happened in India and the world. Most importantly, before a Bill of this nature is brought in, the central government must come out with a white paper on the status of relief to radioactive radiation victims and the liability therein with regard to existing facilities. The Bill must include mining sites of radioactive minerals like uranium in its definition of nuclear facility.
The Union Cabinet cleared the text of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill on November 19, 2009 for introduction in Parliament. The passage of the Nuclear Liability Bill will allow India to join the international convention on civil liability for nuclear damage.
While placing a cap on the compensation to be paid in the case of an accident at a nuclear site, the proposed legislation puts the responsibility for paying this compensation on the operator and not the suppliers or foreign companies installing the reactors in India, as has been demanded by the multinational corporations like Union Carbide Company and Dow Chemicals Company. This provision is not in the public interest.
Nuclear power companies in general and US nuclear companies like GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, Westinghouse and Babcock & Wilcox intend to invest in India if and only they are provided anticipatory bail for their legal liability for nuclear accidents in future.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake informed a US House committee: "We are hoping to see action on nuclear liability legislation that would reduce liability for American companies and allow them to invest in India".
The US nuclear industry is addicted to special laws made by the US government that limits their liability from nuclear radiation accidents. It wishes to operate under the law, which has been shaped by it. It has been noted that US companies who are part of the US commercial nuclear mission to India organised jointly by the Nuclear Energy Institute and the US India Business Council informed the media that they are satisfied over the nature of the Bill and are in active discussion with the Nuclear Power Corporation, Tata Power, GMR, Jindal, NTPC, L&T to explore business potential.
Clearly, the US nuclear companies has seen the Bill (may have drafted it as well) as was reported by financial newspapers, even before it was tabled in our Parliament.
Notably, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's 25 member working group on civil nuclear energy-2009 under the Chairmanship of Dr SK Jain, CMD, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited came out with a 57-page report with the format of the proposed Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2009. The Bill is based on this report.
The FICCI report has an annexure that is about "Domestic Legislation Dealing with CNL" (Civil Nuclear Liability) wherein it states, "As a natural corollary to the liberalisation of the nuclear sector in India, the government of India is mooting the idea of a CNL Bill. Aligning to any international CNL treaty would involve the enactment of a domestic CNL legislation with appropriate provisions. There being no explicit statute or legislation in India, either creating or limiting liability of persons engaged in nuclear installations till now, liability would stand determined by courts, pursuant to actions in tort."
FICCI's working group on nuclear energy suggests that the directions and observations of the Supreme Court in Charan Lal Sahu's case (in the matter of Bhopal's industrial catastrophe) should serve as the object and purpose for enacting such CNL legislation. This entails the basis for damages in case of leakages and accident should be statutorily fixed taking into consideration the nature of damages inflicted, the consequences thereof and the ability and capacity of the parties to pay.
A law should be enacted to ensure immediate relief to victims -- viz, by providing for the constitution of tribunals regulated by special procedure for determining compensation to victims of industrial disasters or accident. The law should also provide for interim relief to victims during the pendency of proceedings. The law should provide for the establishment of a statutory Industrial Disaster Fund, contributions to which may be made by the government and industries, whether they are of transnational corporations or domestic undertakings, public or private. The Public Liability Insurance Act has been constituted pursuant to this, but it excludes damage from 'accidents caused by radioactivity'.
In the United States, liability for nuclear accidents is set at $10 billion (US), while in Japan [ Images ] the cap will be doubled next year to roughly $1.47 billion (Canadian). Whether a nuclear accident is a $650 million event or a multi-billion dollar catastrophe is determined by the direction and speed of the wind that carries the radioactive radiation.
Currently, Canada is seized with a Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act wherein the bill raises the cap on liability to $650 million from the $75 million limit established in 1976. The damage from Chernobyl is estimated at some $250 billion. In Germany, there is no cap on nuclear liability but an operator must be able to cover at least $4 billion but the civil liability is estimated at Euro 2000-5000 billion.
The international conventions, which provide for the liability regime, also favour the industry and not the possible victims and provides for indemnity to the global nuclear industry: the Paris Convention (1960), the Vienna [ Images ] Convention (VC) revised in 1997 and the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC).
One of the worrying things of the new bill is that liability is likely to shift from manufacturer to operator.
FICCI's suggestions for 'Domestic legislation dealing with CNL' may incorporate the following: Single point liability for the operator of the nuclear installation ('Operator'); Liability of non-operators transferred to the operator; Exceptions to liability to include standard force-major provisions with specific emphasis on terrorist and anti-social activities; Capping of liabilities according to internationally adhered benchmarks may be adopted with the government prescribing the threshold limit; Prescribed liability for the plant must be benchmarked to the risk-magnitude of the installation.
It is now well known that 'hazardous corporations' are a fit case for the application of the principle of Absolute Liability and multinational enterprise liability because they are neither 'restricted by national boundaries' nor effectively controlled by international law' because of their complex corporate structure with 'networks of subsidiaries and decisions which make it 'exceedingly difficult or even impossible to pinpoint responsibility for the damage caused by the enterprise'. They operate through a neatly designed network of interlocking directors', a 'common operating system', global distribution and marketing systems', design development and technology worldwide, financial and other controls and highly sophisticated and technologically capable machines and working staff.
Consequently, victims of such daily actions are unable to identify which unit of the enterprise caused the harm. Therefore, faults by even a local subsidiary must be attributed to the parent company because their duty too is non-delegable.
Notably, the Supreme Court also held that the Act only deals with civil liability and as such does not curtail or affect rights in respect of criminal liability. The Civil Liability from Nuclear Damages Bill must be redrafted to include both criminal liabilities and deterrent civil liabilities.
Defence Research and Development Canada, Canadian Department of Defence has suggested that a severe nuclear accident results in wide contamination. The research looked at the impact of a relatively small dirty bomb going off in downtown Toronto. It estimated that cleaning up the contamination using the most stringent standards could cost up to $250 billion, and that the economic toll could reach $23.5 billion. The research was commissioned in 2007. No such research has been commissioned in India. I submit that the Committee should recommend such study.
The institutional accountability for Bhopal and Kaiga like disasters rests with Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and the Civil Liability from Nuclear Damages Bill shows that it has not learnt any lessons because it has not been made accountable for its past lapses.
Private companies who want to do business with India have been seeking a liability law that protects their nuclear energy business at any cost. Foreign companies wanting to supply nuclear reactors and other equipment have been pressing India for the speedy passage of this crucial Bill. The Indian government is required to make some changes in its Atomic Energy Act as well.
I submit that the Committee should study the report of the investigative commission appointed by US President Jimmy Carter immediately following the nuclear accident and take lessons from it for recommendations to the government. US President Jimmy Carter had appointed a 12-member commission which submitted its Report of the President's Commission on The Accident at Three Mile Island -- The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI in October 1979. It is advisable to learn from the blunders of the past.
Indian 'Nuclear Liability Bill' must take note of the environmental hazards from the nuclear facilities and potential nuclear accidents and incorporate stringent criminal and civil liability provisions taking lessons from worst accident at a civilian nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island occurred on March 28, 1979 in US and the Chernobyl disaster, a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This nuclear accident led to the cessation of new nuclear plant construction in the US.
Before passing the bill an independent and credible multi-disciplinary commission and a joint parliamentary committee should be constituted with immediate effect to ascertain the potential consequences of nuclear accidents or 'incidents' and the liability arising out of it.
I submit that the Bill should be amended to include an explicit provision that says there would be no operator liability cap. It should be revisited in the light of compensation regime post BP oil spill disaster in Gulf of Mexico with the wherein first installement has been put at $20 billion (about Rs. 92,000 crores).
I submit that the Parliament should consider the much higher limits than the United States has set for itself keeping in mind the possibility that the actual damages could be far greater than the U.S. liability limit.
I have come across a reference of a 1997 study by the U.S. government's own Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, found that the severe spent fuel pool accidents could result in damages from somewhat under $1 billion of up to $566 billion, depending on a how full and hot the pool is at the time of the accident and the intensity of the postulated fire. The high-end figure would amount to over $700 billion in 2009 dollars. Vast amounts of land — up to about 7,000 square kilometres in the worst case — would have to be condemned. Large numbers of people would have to be evacuated. Further, the maximum estimated monetary damages do not take into account some critical elements. For instance, the Brookhaven amount does not include excess cancer deaths, estimated to range from 1,500 to more than 100,000. Worst case nuclear reactor accident cancers and condemned area were estimated to be generally comparable to the upper end of the spent fuel accident estimates. ( R.J. Travis, R.E. Davis, E.J. Grove, M.A. Azarm, A Safety and Regulatory Assessment of Generic BWR and PWR Permanently Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1997 (NUREG/CR-6451). See Tables 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3.)
The Parliament must consider the inevitability of a severe nuclear power plant disaster and legal remedy must be provided considering the worst case scenario. The June 7, 2010 verdict by the Bhopal's Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court sets a precedent for the worst of corporate crimes -- and even nuclear disasters too -- to be treated like a traffic accident. Bhopal’s verdict was constrained because of the order of Justice Ahmadi Bench of the Supreme Court dated September 13, 1996, in which the charges against Indian officials of Union Carbide India Limited (the subsidiary majority owned by Union Carbide Corporation) were diluted. Since February 2001, the culpability lies with the Dow Chemical Company, which took over Union Carbide Corporation USA. The Parliament must make corporations in general and nuclear corporations in particular subservient to its legislative will else if laws become the artifacts of the corporations supreme legislative body is turned into a rubber stamp.
I submit the following specific suggestions:
1. Atomic Energy Regulatory Board should be reconstituted to ensure that its function is indeed of a regulator with sufficient teeth and not a promoter of nuclear commerce at any cost.
2. Liability to “operator”. (Chapter II, Cl. 4 (1))
This provision reminds one of how Corporation was defined as "An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility” by Ambrose Bierce (1842– 1914), the author of The Devil's Dictionary.
The government of India's original position in the Bhopal case that "the corporation and its subsidiaries are treated as a unit, without regard to the location of responsibility within that unit". Consequently, an illegal act by it be deemed as the act of the corporation, without consideration to its location of responsibility. The customary alibi of corporations is an act in sophistry designed to conceal fact of their crime.
3. Factories Act should be suitably amended to deal with industrial disasters like the one from nuclear installations. Such disasters provide a compelling logic for a legal regime to pierce the corporate veils created through provisions such as act of subsidiary and liability of operator alone.
In 1987, after Union Carbide insincerely argued in court that it had given a flawlessly designed plant which was operated negligently, the government of India amended the Factories Act 1948. A new chapter was added with the “provisions relating to hazardous processes”. Section 7 B, sub-section (5) absolved the person (who) designs, manufactures, imports, or supplies” plant and machines from the responsibility for the effect that the plant and machines has on risk and safety, provided the user gives an assurance “to take steps specified in such undertaking to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the (plant and machinery) will be safe and without risks to the health of workers when properly used, the elimination or minimisation of any risks to the health or safety of the workers to which the design or article may give rise.”
This demonstrates how, even after the Bhopal experience, corporations succeeded in getting a law enacted that provided them with a convenient loophole in case of negligence.
The Committee should look at the "Atomic Economics" as enunciated by Bush administration's blueprint for nuclear power policy and whether or not it suits India's supreme public interest. The Bus administration's "Nuclear 2010" program was an effort to subsidize the development of new nuclear power plants by the end of the decade. The atomic component of the Bush-Cheney energy agenda led to the US administration's request for $38.5 million for the 2010 program in its fiscal 2003 Energy Department budget. This funding request was cleared by House and Senate committees with ease apparently because this nuclear energy program is a public policy by and, for corporations. The program was based on a report by the Near Term Deployment Group (NTDG), a panel co-chaired by executives from nuclear powerhouses Duke Energy and Southern Nuclear Operating Co. Of the panel's 13 members, at least 10 are either directly employed by the nuclear industry or have consulted for it.
It is noteworthy that although it was prepared by corporate executives and their advocates, the NTDG's report-titled "A Roadmap To Deploy New Nuclear Power Plants in the United States by 2010"-is candid about the numerous economic reasons why new nuclear power plants should not be built. Summing up the sanity of new plant construction, the Bush administration's blueprint stated that "economic viability for a nuclear plant is difficult to demonstrate."
The panel had estimated that new plants could cost as much as a staggering $2,128 per kilowatt of electricity generated. Natural gas fired plants, by comparison, are likely to top out under the most expensive scenarios at $682 per kilowatt. Even the NTDG's lowest estimate comes in at $1,000 per kilowatt of generating capacity- 46 percent higher than the highest estimate to build a gas-fired plant. Using a more realistic cost of gas-fired plant construction of about $500 per kilowatt-a cost for which, unlike nuclear power, there is a track record in the real world-a nuclear plant project built under optimum circumstances would still cost twice as much as building a gas-fired plant.
Investors too are wary because nuclear power plants take a long time to build; and by the time they actually start generating electricity, more power may be available on the market, rendering >. the new plants even more of an economic white elephant.
The Committee should take note of NTDG suggestions but reach reach its own conclusions Of eight designs for new nuclear reactors identified as "near term candidates" in the 2010 report, the pebble bed modular reactor "is the only one for which there is currently a potential customer actively involved and investing in the plant's development."
The committee should examine the corporate crimes of nuclear corporations like Exelon, the mother of all nuclear power corporation which had walked away from a pebble-bed demonstration project in South Africa where it is reported to be proposing to build a nuclear reactor without a containment dome which was deemed ludicrous and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission analyzed the technology in anticipation of a design application.
The NTDG had analyzed economic competitiveness of several large-scale reactor designs, including the Westinghouse AP-600 and AP-1000. Those reactors now appear to be the most likely candidates in the Nuclear 2010 initiative. But Westinghouse estimates that an AP-1000, the cheaper of the two thanks to economy of scale, would cost $1,657 per kilowatt of electricity generating capacity-more than three times the going rate for gas-fired plants. The NTDG doesn't think that the market price of electricity will cover the costs of such an expensive project.
It is feared that Indian consumers would be forced to buy power from the new nuclear plant, even if other, lower-cost options are available. Such purchase power agreements could be foisted on hapless consumers by state or regional regulators. But even then the new plants would need millions in taxpayer subsidies.
It is submitted that as has been the case in general the citizens and the legislatures have been taken for granted in the matter of the permitting and approval process to avoid pesky questions about safety, security or other issues get raised.
It is contended that the proponents of the nuclear power plants are putting profit ahead of public safety. The Nuclear 2010 blueprint prepared by the NTDG attempted to rationalize the economics of nuclear power plants by asserting repeatedly that, despite the frightening economics of nuclear plant construction, the projects will be competitive over the long term. The committee should get seek more to time and constitute its own experts team to examine the economic track record of nuclear power plants is characterized chiefly by cost overruns, unexpectedly high operation and maintenance costs, expensive unscheduled shutdowns, and an overall failure to perform competitively.
As recently as 1999, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was predicting early retirement for nuclear plants because the plants couldn't compete economically.It must be noted that nuclear companies have themselves gone to great lengths to convince regulators in state after state that nuclear power plants could not compete with other energy sources in a deregulated electricity environment.The corporations were fighting to ensure that as states deregulated their markets, electricity consumers-not nuclear power corporations-would get stuck with the lingering debt on nuclear plants. Such "stranded costs" are estimated to have cost consumers tens of billions of dollars nationwide, including $28 billion in California alone as per a 2002 report. The Committee should study these reports before reaching its conclusions.
The committee should consider recommending protecting consumers by making sure that no public money and government handouts reaches the nuclear industry.
I humbly submit that in the light of the might of nuclear corporations, which pose a challenge to the authority of the government and the parliament to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of the country, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests has been provided a historic opportunity to take step to factor in US President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, wherein he made an appeal to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Yours faithfully
Gopal Krishna
Founder-Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
Cc
Members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests
Dr. Ejaz Ali Member
Shri Jabir Husain Member
Dr. Barun Mukherjee Member
Shri Saman Pathak Member
Shri Anil H. Lad Member
Shri S.S. Ahluwalia Member
Shri Ramachandra Khuntia Member
Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy Member
Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav Member
Shri K.C. Singh Baba Member
Shri Balkrishna Khanderao Balu Shukla Member
Dr. Mirza Mehboob Beg Member
Shri Ninong Ering Member
Kaisar Jahan Member
Shri Jayaram Pangi Member
Shri S.S. Ramasubbu Member
Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal Member
Shri Francisco Sardinha Member
Shri Mansukhbhai D. Vasava Member
Shri Akhilesh Yadav Member
Prof. Ranjan Prasad Yadav Member
Shri A. Ganeshamurthi Member
Dr. Charan Das Mahant Member
Shri Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi Member
Dr. Rajan Sushant Member
Shri Pradeep Tamta Member
Shri Bibhu Prasad Tarai Member
Shri Udyanraje Bhonsle Member
Shri D.V. Sadananda Gowda Member
Dr. T. Subbarami Reddy,
The Chairman,
&
Members of
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests,
New Delhi
Sub: Submission on 'Liability for Damage Bill 2010'
Ref.: Public Notification dated June 24 2010 (Re.:
Dear Dr. Reddy and Members of the Committee,
With reference to your public notification inviting comments from the members of the general public, the following submission is made.
I submit that the move to introduce the Nuclear Liability Bill is a pre-condition for the entry of US companies in the Indian civil nuclear sector.
I am alarmed at the swiftness with which the Bill is being introduced to facilitate the entry of US nuclear power companies into India.
I submit that one of the biggest myths being propagated is that nuclear cooperation with the US is the answer to India's energy crisis, which in any case would not see the light of the day before 2016.
I wish to state that Indian Parliament and citizens have been kept in the dark about the cost of electricity from foreign-built nuclear power reactors.
Unmindful of the fact that all the countries that produce nuclear energy are facing a crisis in the management of nuclear wastes, India is taking the same route, that too with a plan of 25k megawatt by 2020.
I wish to draw your attention to an interview conducted by EG Weymouth, editor-at-Large of Newsweek, on November 16, 2009, wherein Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: 'We had a watershed and a landmark agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation. We would like to operationalise it and ensure that the objectives for the nuclear deal are realised in full merit. My sincere hope is that we can persuade the US administration to be more liberal when it comes to transfer of dual-use technologies to us. Now that we are strategic partners these restrictions make no sense. India has an impeccable record of not participating in any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. So, that is my number one concern.'
This was in reference to the consent agreement that the US President would have to sign and send to the US Congress. Responding to the question about the need for Indian Parliament to pass a liability agreement in the matter of nuclear cooperation with US, the prime minister said: 'We will do that. Our Cabinet will be taking a decision. I do not see any difficulties in honouring our commitments.'
Notably, when the prime minister was asked about the specific role of the Indian Parliament, he appears to have highlighted the Union Cabinet.
On October 1, 2008, the Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Non-Proliferation Enhancement Act came into effect after the US Senate passed it. While the role of the US legislature is quite manifest, the Indian Parliament has not been allowed any role to play, not even to examine the deal's provisions, and now wants the Indian legislature to pass a special law to provide foreign companies with liability protection in case of nuclear accidents.
This is being done because US nuclear companies, which are in the private sector, are demanding it. As you are aware so far in India, our nuclear companies, quite like the French and Russians, are State-owned.
I submit that The Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill is an exercise to provide State subsidy to foreign-nuclear reactor builders from the onus of the financial consequences of nuclear disasters, accidents and incidents by shifting the onus for accident liability from the foreign builders to the Indian State and citizens.
The Bill does not provide any evidence that it has taken lessons from The Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania led to 14 years of clean-up costing $1 billion.
The US interests are seeking to avoid open market competition by their companies. Although the US assumes liability for any nuclear catastrophic damages from an accident only above the $10.5 billion figure that is inflation-adjusted every five years and thus variable, which itself is quite low, through its machinations it denies India even that relief which it provides to its own companies.
I submit that the Bill must be revisited in the light of the international nuclear accidents the world over.
I wish to draw your considered attention towards what Peter Mason, president and chief executive of nuclear supplier GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada while explaining to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Canadian House of Commons on Natural Resources that is dealing with Bill C-20, their Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, November 2009. He said, "If there was not a cap and if there was no suitable legislation insurance in place, then we wouldn't be in the nuclear industry".
The Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2009 is ridden with glaring loopholes and booby traps because it insulates nuclear energy companies from punitive legal consequences.
The Bill seems to pretend the non-existence of the report of the US President's Commission on The Accident at Three Mile Island that happened in 1979.
I submit that to begin with it should be renamed as Liability from Nuclear Damage Bill and it must explicitly inform Parliament and the citizens what all lessons from that report has been incorporated in the Bill.
Mere civil liability is totally unacceptable because clearly it has not factored in all the nuclear accidents which have happened in India and the world. Most importantly, before a Bill of this nature is brought in, the central government must come out with a white paper on the status of relief to radioactive radiation victims and the liability therein with regard to existing facilities. The Bill must include mining sites of radioactive minerals like uranium in its definition of nuclear facility.
The Union Cabinet cleared the text of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill on November 19, 2009 for introduction in Parliament. The passage of the Nuclear Liability Bill will allow India to join the international convention on civil liability for nuclear damage.
While placing a cap on the compensation to be paid in the case of an accident at a nuclear site, the proposed legislation puts the responsibility for paying this compensation on the operator and not the suppliers or foreign companies installing the reactors in India, as has been demanded by the multinational corporations like Union Carbide Company and Dow Chemicals Company. This provision is not in the public interest.
Nuclear power companies in general and US nuclear companies like GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, Westinghouse and Babcock & Wilcox intend to invest in India if and only they are provided anticipatory bail for their legal liability for nuclear accidents in future.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake informed a US House committee: "We are hoping to see action on nuclear liability legislation that would reduce liability for American companies and allow them to invest in India".
The US nuclear industry is addicted to special laws made by the US government that limits their liability from nuclear radiation accidents. It wishes to operate under the law, which has been shaped by it. It has been noted that US companies who are part of the US commercial nuclear mission to India organised jointly by the Nuclear Energy Institute and the US India Business Council informed the media that they are satisfied over the nature of the Bill and are in active discussion with the Nuclear Power Corporation, Tata Power, GMR, Jindal, NTPC, L&T to explore business potential.
Clearly, the US nuclear companies has seen the Bill (may have drafted it as well) as was reported by financial newspapers, even before it was tabled in our Parliament.
Notably, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's 25 member working group on civil nuclear energy-2009 under the Chairmanship of Dr SK Jain, CMD, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited came out with a 57-page report with the format of the proposed Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2009. The Bill is based on this report.
The FICCI report has an annexure that is about "Domestic Legislation Dealing with CNL" (Civil Nuclear Liability) wherein it states, "As a natural corollary to the liberalisation of the nuclear sector in India, the government of India is mooting the idea of a CNL Bill. Aligning to any international CNL treaty would involve the enactment of a domestic CNL legislation with appropriate provisions. There being no explicit statute or legislation in India, either creating or limiting liability of persons engaged in nuclear installations till now, liability would stand determined by courts, pursuant to actions in tort."
FICCI's working group on nuclear energy suggests that the directions and observations of the Supreme Court in Charan Lal Sahu's case (in the matter of Bhopal's industrial catastrophe) should serve as the object and purpose for enacting such CNL legislation. This entails the basis for damages in case of leakages and accident should be statutorily fixed taking into consideration the nature of damages inflicted, the consequences thereof and the ability and capacity of the parties to pay.
A law should be enacted to ensure immediate relief to victims -- viz, by providing for the constitution of tribunals regulated by special procedure for determining compensation to victims of industrial disasters or accident. The law should also provide for interim relief to victims during the pendency of proceedings. The law should provide for the establishment of a statutory Industrial Disaster Fund, contributions to which may be made by the government and industries, whether they are of transnational corporations or domestic undertakings, public or private. The Public Liability Insurance Act has been constituted pursuant to this, but it excludes damage from 'accidents caused by radioactivity'.
In the United States, liability for nuclear accidents is set at $10 billion (US), while in Japan [ Images ] the cap will be doubled next year to roughly $1.47 billion (Canadian). Whether a nuclear accident is a $650 million event or a multi-billion dollar catastrophe is determined by the direction and speed of the wind that carries the radioactive radiation.
Currently, Canada is seized with a Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act wherein the bill raises the cap on liability to $650 million from the $75 million limit established in 1976. The damage from Chernobyl is estimated at some $250 billion. In Germany, there is no cap on nuclear liability but an operator must be able to cover at least $4 billion but the civil liability is estimated at Euro 2000-5000 billion.
The international conventions, which provide for the liability regime, also favour the industry and not the possible victims and provides for indemnity to the global nuclear industry: the Paris Convention (1960), the Vienna [ Images ] Convention (VC) revised in 1997 and the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC).
One of the worrying things of the new bill is that liability is likely to shift from manufacturer to operator.
FICCI's suggestions for 'Domestic legislation dealing with CNL' may incorporate the following: Single point liability for the operator of the nuclear installation ('Operator'); Liability of non-operators transferred to the operator; Exceptions to liability to include standard force-major provisions with specific emphasis on terrorist and anti-social activities; Capping of liabilities according to internationally adhered benchmarks may be adopted with the government prescribing the threshold limit; Prescribed liability for the plant must be benchmarked to the risk-magnitude of the installation.
It is now well known that 'hazardous corporations' are a fit case for the application of the principle of Absolute Liability and multinational enterprise liability because they are neither 'restricted by national boundaries' nor effectively controlled by international law' because of their complex corporate structure with 'networks of subsidiaries and decisions which make it 'exceedingly difficult or even impossible to pinpoint responsibility for the damage caused by the enterprise'. They operate through a neatly designed network of interlocking directors', a 'common operating system', global distribution and marketing systems', design development and technology worldwide, financial and other controls and highly sophisticated and technologically capable machines and working staff.
Consequently, victims of such daily actions are unable to identify which unit of the enterprise caused the harm. Therefore, faults by even a local subsidiary must be attributed to the parent company because their duty too is non-delegable.
Notably, the Supreme Court also held that the Act only deals with civil liability and as such does not curtail or affect rights in respect of criminal liability. The Civil Liability from Nuclear Damages Bill must be redrafted to include both criminal liabilities and deterrent civil liabilities.
Defence Research and Development Canada, Canadian Department of Defence has suggested that a severe nuclear accident results in wide contamination. The research looked at the impact of a relatively small dirty bomb going off in downtown Toronto. It estimated that cleaning up the contamination using the most stringent standards could cost up to $250 billion, and that the economic toll could reach $23.5 billion. The research was commissioned in 2007. No such research has been commissioned in India. I submit that the Committee should recommend such study.
The institutional accountability for Bhopal and Kaiga like disasters rests with Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and the Civil Liability from Nuclear Damages Bill shows that it has not learnt any lessons because it has not been made accountable for its past lapses.
Private companies who want to do business with India have been seeking a liability law that protects their nuclear energy business at any cost. Foreign companies wanting to supply nuclear reactors and other equipment have been pressing India for the speedy passage of this crucial Bill. The Indian government is required to make some changes in its Atomic Energy Act as well.
I submit that the Committee should study the report of the investigative commission appointed by US President Jimmy Carter immediately following the nuclear accident and take lessons from it for recommendations to the government. US President Jimmy Carter had appointed a 12-member commission which submitted its Report of the President's Commission on The Accident at Three Mile Island -- The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI in October 1979. It is advisable to learn from the blunders of the past.
Indian 'Nuclear Liability Bill' must take note of the environmental hazards from the nuclear facilities and potential nuclear accidents and incorporate stringent criminal and civil liability provisions taking lessons from worst accident at a civilian nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island occurred on March 28, 1979 in US and the Chernobyl disaster, a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This nuclear accident led to the cessation of new nuclear plant construction in the US.
Before passing the bill an independent and credible multi-disciplinary commission and a joint parliamentary committee should be constituted with immediate effect to ascertain the potential consequences of nuclear accidents or 'incidents' and the liability arising out of it.
I submit that the Bill should be amended to include an explicit provision that says there would be no operator liability cap. It should be revisited in the light of compensation regime post BP oil spill disaster in Gulf of Mexico with the wherein first installement has been put at $20 billion (about Rs. 92,000 crores).
I submit that the Parliament should consider the much higher limits than the United States has set for itself keeping in mind the possibility that the actual damages could be far greater than the U.S. liability limit.
I have come across a reference of a 1997 study by the U.S. government's own Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, found that the severe spent fuel pool accidents could result in damages from somewhat under $1 billion of up to $566 billion, depending on a how full and hot the pool is at the time of the accident and the intensity of the postulated fire. The high-end figure would amount to over $700 billion in 2009 dollars. Vast amounts of land — up to about 7,000 square kilometres in the worst case — would have to be condemned. Large numbers of people would have to be evacuated. Further, the maximum estimated monetary damages do not take into account some critical elements. For instance, the Brookhaven amount does not include excess cancer deaths, estimated to range from 1,500 to more than 100,000. Worst case nuclear reactor accident cancers and condemned area were estimated to be generally comparable to the upper end of the spent fuel accident estimates. ( R.J. Travis, R.E. Davis, E.J. Grove, M.A. Azarm, A Safety and Regulatory Assessment of Generic BWR and PWR Permanently Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1997 (NUREG/CR-6451). See Tables 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3.)
The Parliament must consider the inevitability of a severe nuclear power plant disaster and legal remedy must be provided considering the worst case scenario. The June 7, 2010 verdict by the Bhopal's Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court sets a precedent for the worst of corporate crimes -- and even nuclear disasters too -- to be treated like a traffic accident. Bhopal’s verdict was constrained because of the order of Justice Ahmadi Bench of the Supreme Court dated September 13, 1996, in which the charges against Indian officials of Union Carbide India Limited (the subsidiary majority owned by Union Carbide Corporation) were diluted. Since February 2001, the culpability lies with the Dow Chemical Company, which took over Union Carbide Corporation USA. The Parliament must make corporations in general and nuclear corporations in particular subservient to its legislative will else if laws become the artifacts of the corporations supreme legislative body is turned into a rubber stamp.
I submit the following specific suggestions:
1. Atomic Energy Regulatory Board should be reconstituted to ensure that its function is indeed of a regulator with sufficient teeth and not a promoter of nuclear commerce at any cost.
2. Liability to “operator”. (Chapter II, Cl. 4 (1))
This provision reminds one of how Corporation was defined as "An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility” by Ambrose Bierce (1842– 1914), the author of The Devil's Dictionary.
The government of India's original position in the Bhopal case that "the corporation and its subsidiaries are treated as a unit, without regard to the location of responsibility within that unit". Consequently, an illegal act by it be deemed as the act of the corporation, without consideration to its location of responsibility. The customary alibi of corporations is an act in sophistry designed to conceal fact of their crime.
3. Factories Act should be suitably amended to deal with industrial disasters like the one from nuclear installations. Such disasters provide a compelling logic for a legal regime to pierce the corporate veils created through provisions such as act of subsidiary and liability of operator alone.
In 1987, after Union Carbide insincerely argued in court that it had given a flawlessly designed plant which was operated negligently, the government of India amended the Factories Act 1948. A new chapter was added with the “provisions relating to hazardous processes”. Section 7 B, sub-section (5) absolved the person (who) designs, manufactures, imports, or supplies” plant and machines from the responsibility for the effect that the plant and machines has on risk and safety, provided the user gives an assurance “to take steps specified in such undertaking to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the (plant and machinery) will be safe and without risks to the health of workers when properly used, the elimination or minimisation of any risks to the health or safety of the workers to which the design or article may give rise.”
This demonstrates how, even after the Bhopal experience, corporations succeeded in getting a law enacted that provided them with a convenient loophole in case of negligence.
The Committee should look at the "Atomic Economics" as enunciated by Bush administration's blueprint for nuclear power policy and whether or not it suits India's supreme public interest. The Bus administration's "Nuclear 2010" program was an effort to subsidize the development of new nuclear power plants by the end of the decade. The atomic component of the Bush-Cheney energy agenda led to the US administration's request for $38.5 million for the 2010 program in its fiscal 2003 Energy Department budget. This funding request was cleared by House and Senate committees with ease apparently because this nuclear energy program is a public policy by and, for corporations. The program was based on a report by the Near Term Deployment Group (NTDG), a panel co-chaired by executives from nuclear powerhouses Duke Energy and Southern Nuclear Operating Co. Of the panel's 13 members, at least 10 are either directly employed by the nuclear industry or have consulted for it.
It is noteworthy that although it was prepared by corporate executives and their advocates, the NTDG's report-titled "A Roadmap To Deploy New Nuclear Power Plants in the United States by 2010"-is candid about the numerous economic reasons why new nuclear power plants should not be built. Summing up the sanity of new plant construction, the Bush administration's blueprint stated that "economic viability for a nuclear plant is difficult to demonstrate."
The panel had estimated that new plants could cost as much as a staggering $2,128 per kilowatt of electricity generated. Natural gas fired plants, by comparison, are likely to top out under the most expensive scenarios at $682 per kilowatt. Even the NTDG's lowest estimate comes in at $1,000 per kilowatt of generating capacity- 46 percent higher than the highest estimate to build a gas-fired plant. Using a more realistic cost of gas-fired plant construction of about $500 per kilowatt-a cost for which, unlike nuclear power, there is a track record in the real world-a nuclear plant project built under optimum circumstances would still cost twice as much as building a gas-fired plant.
Investors too are wary because nuclear power plants take a long time to build; and by the time they actually start generating electricity, more power may be available on the market, rendering >. the new plants even more of an economic white elephant.
The Committee should take note of NTDG suggestions but reach reach its own conclusions Of eight designs for new nuclear reactors identified as "near term candidates" in the 2010 report, the pebble bed modular reactor "is the only one for which there is currently a potential customer actively involved and investing in the plant's development."
The committee should examine the corporate crimes of nuclear corporations like Exelon, the mother of all nuclear power corporation which had walked away from a pebble-bed demonstration project in South Africa where it is reported to be proposing to build a nuclear reactor without a containment dome which was deemed ludicrous and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission analyzed the technology in anticipation of a design application.
The NTDG had analyzed economic competitiveness of several large-scale reactor designs, including the Westinghouse AP-600 and AP-1000. Those reactors now appear to be the most likely candidates in the Nuclear 2010 initiative. But Westinghouse estimates that an AP-1000, the cheaper of the two thanks to economy of scale, would cost $1,657 per kilowatt of electricity generating capacity-more than three times the going rate for gas-fired plants. The NTDG doesn't think that the market price of electricity will cover the costs of such an expensive project.
It is feared that Indian consumers would be forced to buy power from the new nuclear plant, even if other, lower-cost options are available. Such purchase power agreements could be foisted on hapless consumers by state or regional regulators. But even then the new plants would need millions in taxpayer subsidies.
It is submitted that as has been the case in general the citizens and the legislatures have been taken for granted in the matter of the permitting and approval process to avoid pesky questions about safety, security or other issues get raised.
It is contended that the proponents of the nuclear power plants are putting profit ahead of public safety. The Nuclear 2010 blueprint prepared by the NTDG attempted to rationalize the economics of nuclear power plants by asserting repeatedly that, despite the frightening economics of nuclear plant construction, the projects will be competitive over the long term. The committee should get seek more to time and constitute its own experts team to examine the economic track record of nuclear power plants is characterized chiefly by cost overruns, unexpectedly high operation and maintenance costs, expensive unscheduled shutdowns, and an overall failure to perform competitively.
As recently as 1999, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was predicting early retirement for nuclear plants because the plants couldn't compete economically.It must be noted that nuclear companies have themselves gone to great lengths to convince regulators in state after state that nuclear power plants could not compete with other energy sources in a deregulated electricity environment.The corporations were fighting to ensure that as states deregulated their markets, electricity consumers-not nuclear power corporations-would get stuck with the lingering debt on nuclear plants. Such "stranded costs" are estimated to have cost consumers tens of billions of dollars nationwide, including $28 billion in California alone as per a 2002 report. The Committee should study these reports before reaching its conclusions.
The committee should consider recommending protecting consumers by making sure that no public money and government handouts reaches the nuclear industry.
I humbly submit that in the light of the might of nuclear corporations, which pose a challenge to the authority of the government and the parliament to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of the country, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests has been provided a historic opportunity to take step to factor in US President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, wherein he made an appeal to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Yours faithfully
Gopal Krishna
Founder-Convener
ToxicsWatch Alliance
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
Cc
Members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests
Dr. Ejaz Ali Member
Shri Jabir Husain Member
Dr. Barun Mukherjee Member
Shri Saman Pathak Member
Shri Anil H. Lad Member
Shri S.S. Ahluwalia Member
Shri Ramachandra Khuntia Member
Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy Member
Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav Member
Shri K.C. Singh Baba Member
Shri Balkrishna Khanderao Balu Shukla Member
Dr. Mirza Mehboob Beg Member
Shri Ninong Ering Member
Kaisar Jahan Member
Shri Jayaram Pangi Member
Shri S.S. Ramasubbu Member
Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal Member
Shri Francisco Sardinha Member
Shri Mansukhbhai D. Vasava Member
Shri Akhilesh Yadav Member
Prof. Ranjan Prasad Yadav Member
Shri A. Ganeshamurthi Member
Dr. Charan Das Mahant Member
Shri Gajendra Singh Rajukhedi Member
Dr. Rajan Sushant Member
Shri Pradeep Tamta Member
Shri Bibhu Prasad Tarai Member
Shri Udyanraje Bhonsle Member
Shri D.V. Sadananda Gowda Member