The NY Times is reporting on Trafigura, a $28 billion transnational corporation, that dumped a toxic sludge off the Ivory Coast because it didn't want to pay the $300,000 it would cost to have the waste disposed of by European firms. The result is an ecological and public health disaster in the Ivory Coast's largest city, Abidjan. "So far eight people have died, dozens have been hospitalized and 85,000 have sought medical attention, paralyzing the fragile health care system in a country divided and impoverished by civil war, and the crisis has forced a government shakeup," Lydia Polgreen and Marlise Simons report. And Trafigura is not the only corporation to look to Africa for a solution to its waste problems.
(By an interesting coincidence, Bob Herbert's
column today (behind a subscription firewall, unfortunately) is about a predominately African-American community in Dickson County, Tennessee, that has an inordinate amount of cancer cases. Since the early 1980s, the area has been the site of a toxic landfill that the federal government has assured the residents was not dangerous--though they warned white families away.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/world/africa/02ivory.html?ei=5087%0A&en=df11589f79cf99e5&ex=1159934400&pagewanted=print...
The risk of sickness from the waste has abated with evaporation, experts said. But there may be long-term effects of exposure. In Dgibi, a village on the northern outskirts of Abidjan where some of the waste landed, an impromptu clinic set up to examine people exposed to the waste has been seeing 200 patients a day.
Most complain of nausea, headaches, skin sores and nosebleeds, said Stanislaus Dessi, a doctor at the clinic who works for the Ministry of Health.
...
Greenpeace has filed criminal complaints in Amsterdam against Trafigura, Amsterdam Port Services and the Dutch environmental authorities. The Dutch government said it could not comment while criminal investigations were under way. There are no fewer than five investigations going on in Ivory Coast.
The city of Amsterdam and the Dutch Parliament have begun their own inquiries.
“The whole procedure was illegal, first allowing the waste in, then pumping it back on board and letting the ship leave without any licenses,” said Eco Matser, a chemist and expert in toxic waste at Greenpeace.
Africa has long been a dumping ground for all sorts of things the developed world has no use for. “This is the underbelly of globalization,” said Jim Puckett, an activist at the Basel Action Network, an environmental group that fights toxic waste dumping. “Environmental regulations in the north have made disposing of waste expensive, so corporations look south.”
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