Tuesday 26 January 2010

BAD STUFF BY THE TON that comes out of some CHIMNEYS especially those CO- BURNING HAZARDOUS WASTE


Information Supplied by The Air That We Breathe Group
(Courtesy of UKWIN)

Operator Site Address Licence
Lafarge Industries TROWBRIDGE ROAD, WESTBURY, WILTSHIRE BL7752IT
Process CEMENT AND LIME Manufacture

Material Maximum Reported Emission 1998 – 2006 Effects on Human Health

Ammonia
22.5t Excessive exposure to ammonia may affect the eye, lung, nose, skin and throat.
Boron
17453kg Excessive exposure to boron and its compounds may affect the brain, digestive system, eye, kidney, liver, lung, nose, reproductive system, skin, throat and the unborn child.
Metals
Antimony
10.4kg Excessive exposure to antimony may affect the digestive system, eye, heart, kidney, lung and skin.
Arsenic
4.2kg Arsenic and some of its compounds may cause cancer and genetic damage. Excessive exposures may affect the blood, blood vessels, brain, digestive system, lung, peripheral nerve and skin.
Beryllium
3.43kg Excessive exposure to beryllium may affect the eye, lung and skin, and may cause cancer.
Cadmium
2.7kg Excessive exposure to cadmium and its compounds may affect the blood, blood vessels, bone, digestive system, heart, immune system, kidney, liver and lung, and may cause cancer. Danger of serious damage to health by prolonged exposure through inhalation and if swallowed. Possible risk of irreversible effects.
Chromium
62.2kg Chromium and its compounds may cause cancer and genetic damage. Excessive exposure may affect the digestive system, kidney, liver, lung, nose, skin and the unborn child.
Copper
29.9kg Excessive exposure to copper and its compounds may affect the digestive system, eye, kidney, liver, lung and nose.
Lead
100kg Lead and some of its compounds may affect the development of the brain in children and the unborn child. Excessive exposure may affect the blood, blood vessels, digestive system, kidney, peripheral nerve, reproductive system and the unborn child, and may cause cancer.
Manganese
100kg Excessive exposure to manganese and its compounds may affect the brain, liver, lung, reproductive system and skin.
Mercury
20.44kg Excessive exposure to mercury and its compounds may affect the brain, digestive system, eye, heart, kidney, lung, reproductive system, skin, and the unborn child.
Nickel
103.83kg Nickel may cause cancer and genetic damage.Excessive exposure to nickel may affect the blood, lung, nose, reproductive system, skin and the unborn child.
Selenium
200kg Excessive exposure to selenium and its compounds may affect the brain, digestive system, eye, heart, liver, lung, peripheral nerve, reproductive system, skin, throat.
Vanadium
100kg Excessive exposure to vanadium compounds may affect the digestive system, eye, liver, skin, throat and the unborn child, and may cause cancer.
Zinc
100kg Excessive exposure to zinc compounds may affect the blood, digestive system, eye, kidney, lung, pancreas, reproductive system, skin and the unborn child.
Ozone 50kg Excessive exposure to ozone may affect the eye and lung.
Carbon dioxide
716004.2t Major contributor to climate change. Climate changes will inevitably influence the health of those directly affected.
Carbon dioxide – ‘chemical’
326000t
Carbon dioxide – ‘thermal’
307000t
Carbon monoxide
678.7t Excessive exposure to carbon mono
xide may affect the blood, brain, heart, and the unborn child.
Nitrogen oxides (as NO2)
3447.7t Excessive exposure to nitrogen oxides may affect the blood, liver, lung and spleen.
Nitrous oxide
15800kg
Sulphur oxides (as SO2)
1685t Excessive exposure to sulphur dioxide may affect the eye, lung and throat.
Hydrogen chloride
52.46t Excessive exposure to hydrogen chloride may affect the eye, lung, nose, skin and throat.
Inorganic chlorine compounds 52466kg
Hydrogen cyanide
<200kg A poisonous gas that affects the central nervous system and can cause death if the exposure is high enough. May cause brain damage at lower than lethal concentrations.
Hydrogen fluoride
<5000kg Potential symptoms of overexposure are irritation of eyes, nose and throat; pulmonary edema; skin and eye burns; nasal congestion; bronchitis.
Inorganic fluorine compounds <5000kg Can cause fluorosis – may damage teeth and bones if exposed to excessive concentrations
Particulate matter
– total 147.91t
PM10 69.5t Particulates affect the heart and lung. COMEAP have concluded that there is an effect on health from any particulate matter.
Methane 50.1t Excessive exposure to methane may affect the brain.

VOC and POP
Volatile Organic Compounds include a large number of toxic chemicals some effects are listed below under the individual chemicals. No one knows the effect of small quantities of lots of organic chemicals acting together.
VOCs (as C) (1998-2001)
268.9t
VOCs (NMVOCs) (2002 onwards)
84t
Benzene
4367.02kg Benzene may cause cancer and genetic damage. Excessive exposure may affect the blood, brain, heart, immune system, liver, lung and skin. Toxic: danger of serious damage to health by prolonged exposure through inhalation
Butadiene (1,3-Butadiene)
<100kg 1,3-Butadiene may cause cancer and genetic damage. Excessive exposure may affect the blood, brain, eye, heart, kidney, lung, nose and throat.
Styrene
<100kg Excessive exposure to styrene may affect the blood, brain, eye, immune system, kidney, liver, lung, skin and throat.
Carbon disulphide
<1000kg Excessive exposure to carbon disulphide may affect the brain, eye, heart, liver, lung, reproductive system, skin, and the unborn child.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
There is rapidly increasing body of evidence supporting the conclusion that carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) produce severe, long-term immunotoxicity. This may be related to the structure of the carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons since immune alterations have not been observed following exposure to noncarcinogenic congeners. Evidence exists to indicate that mixtures of PAHs are carcinogenic in humans. The evidence in humans comes primarily from occupational studies of workers exposed to mixtures containing PAHs as a result of their involvement in such processes as coke production, roofing, oil refining, or coal gasification (e.g., coal tar, roofing tar, soot, coke oven emissions, soot, crude oil)… . PAHs, however, have not been clearly identified as the causative agent. Cancer associated with exposure to PAH-containing mixtures in humans occurs predominantly in the lung and skin following inhalation and dermal exposure, respectively. Some ingestion of PAHs is likely because of swallowing of particles containing PAHs subsequent to mucociliary clearance of these particulates from the lung.
PAHs (borneff six)
630.88kg
Benzo(a)Pyrene
<1kg Benzo(a)pyrene may cause cancer and genetic damage. Excessive exposure may affect the blood, immune system, reproductive system and the unborn child. May cause heritable genetic damage; May impair fertility;
Benzo(b)fluoranthene
<1kg probable human carcinogen, increased incidences of skin, lung, bladder & gastrointestinal cancer. Pregnant women may be especially susceptible to exposure effects associated with coal tar pitch volatiles like benzo(b)fluoranthene and other pahs.
Benzo(g,h,i)perylene
<1kg Possibly genotoxic
Benzo(k)fluoranthene <1kg probable human carcinogen.
Chrysene
<10kg probable human carcinogen. Pregnant women may be especially susceptible to exposure effects associated with coal tar pitch volatiles. Persons with existing skin disorders may be more susceptible to the effects of coal tar pitch volatiles
Indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene
<1kg The agent is possibly carcinogenic to humans. caused increased incidences of lung and genitourinary cancer mortality
Naphthalene
<10000kg Excessive exposure to naphthalene may affect the blood, breastfed baby, eye, lung and the unborn child.
Organo-chlorine and organo-fluorine compounds
CFCs (as C) (1998-2001)
<100kg Damage the ozone layer so may affect health indirectly through increased uv radiation at ground level.
CFCs (total mass 2002 onwards)
<50kg
Carbon tetrachloride
<100kg Excessive exposure to carbon tetrachloride may affect the brain, digestive system, eye, kidney, liver and skin, and may cause cancer.
Dioxins and furans – as ITEQ 70 mg Excessive exposure to dioxins may affect the heart, immune system, liver, skin, thyroid gland and the unborn child, and may cause cancer.
Dioxins and furans- as WHO TEQ 40 mg
Halons (as C) (1998-2001) <100kg Chemicals containing fluorine and chlorine. Many cause cancer or have narcotic effects. They can be associated with dioxin formation.
Halons (total) (2002 onwards) <50kg
HCFCs (as C) (1998-2001) <100kg
HCFCs (total) (2002 onwards) <1000kg
HFCs (as C) (1998-2001) <100kg
HFCs (total) (2002 onwards) <100kg
PCBs as WHO TEQ .02g
PFCs (as C) (1998-2001) <100kg
<100kg
Phosgene (Carbonic dichloride)
<100kg Excessive exposure to phosgene may affect eye, lung, skin and throat.
Methyl chloride
<10000kg Excessive exposure to chloromethane may affect the brain, eye, heart, kidney, liver, reproductive system and skin, and may cause cancer.
Sulphur hexafluoride <100kg Excessive exposure to sulphur hexafluoride may affect the brain.
Source: The Air That We Breathe.

KIRKLEES INFANT MORTALITY




Please note the general windrose pollution distribution similarities to the Beddington one outlined earlier in the blog.We certainly don't want some researcher being able to draw similar pictures in Croydon and Sutton wards within a year of an incinerator opening!

Monday 25 January 2010

Chernobyl and Hiroshima: fiddled figures and false reassurances


Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Paperback)
by Alexey V. Yablokov (Editor), Vassily B. Nesterenko (Editor), Alexey V. Nesterenko (Editor), Janette D. ShermanNevinger (Editor) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Feb 2010







The latest publication from Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian scientists blows the Chernobyl cover-up wide open. The recent spat about nuclear safety in the Guardian still pulls a lot of punches. The public have been deliberately and extensively lied too since 1945 by the highest, and apparently most trustworthy national and international bodies. Its time to put a stop to this, a stop to negligent nuclear thinking and a stop to burning radioactive waste.


So…can you only say radiation caused illness when you can link a specific dose to disease…WHAT A CON !

1.Nobody was measuring the radiation levels in the early days.

2.The radionucleotides with the shortest half lives are the ones that decay quickest with the most intense alpha beta and gamma emissions….so the earliest days have the biggest exposures.

3.1000 times more intense than levels measured a few weeks or a month later.

4.No attempt made to count variations in levels,hotspots and geographically variable weather related deposition.

5.No attempt to measure the different rarer and often more dangerous elements and isoptopes to give a complete description to exposure (the commonly measured ones of caesium, strontium, iodine and plutonium are only a few of all the ones involved).

6.No possibility of measuring internal radiation doses from breathing in or swallowing radioactive contamination

So…can you only say radiation caused illness when you can link total radiation exposure to a whole population….ANOTHER CON!

The Americans forbade research and removed figures for the first four years ( at least) after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hiding approximately 100,000 deaths. They should have been added to the admitted figures, and would have affected all safety and risk criteria that have been used since.

The USSR forbade doctors to link illnesses to radiation for three years after Chernobyl. This data has been irretrievably lost. A triumph of expediency over scientific measurement.

It’s really time that CND, GreenPeace, Friends of the Earth and The Green Party got out of their intimidated bunkers and gained the confidence to challenge government on FIRST PRINCIPLES. The public have a right and a need to know.

"SMOKE IS REALLY BAD FOR CHILDREN"

Here is yet another study, in a long line, that confirms extensive international research.We must not allow another,extra group of diesel lorries to go onto our roads,nor permit incinerators that belch the equivalent of 2 miles worth of 4 lane motorway fumes 24/7!What is even worse is that there are extra dangers. An international conference on air pollution, held in London a month ago, confirmed that waste transfer stations’ dusts (e.g. Beddington , Factory Lane and Bexley) have worse properties than traffic dust.

Traffic fumes increase the risks of child pneumonia
Top consultant announces breakthrough study

Denis Campbell, health correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010


Children who live near a main road are in greater danger of catching pneumonia because pollution from passing traffic damages their lungs. A leading expert in childhood breathing difficulties has made the link between exposure to particles from vehicle exhausts and a child's susceptibility to the chest infection, which can be fatal.

Professor Jonathan Grigg, an honorary consultant at the Royal London Hospital and academic paediatrician at Queen Mary, University of London, made the breakthrough after studying the effect of airborne pollutants on human lung cells. Children whose home is within 100 metres of a main road could be as much as 65% more likely than others to develop pneumonia, he said.

Although the disease is usually associated with the elderly, it is a significant childhood illness. Every year about 20,000 children and young people under 18 end up in hospital after contracting the condition. It can also be fatal. Between 2004 and 2008, it killed between 60 and 77 patients aged under 20 annually, of whom between 38 and 52 were under the age of five, according to data from the Office of National Statistics.

Children under 12 months are the most likely to die. Of the 76 young people under 20 who died in 2008, 29 had not reached their first birthday – 20 boys and nine girls – and 23 others were between one and four.

Grigg took contaminated air particles collected as part of Leicester city council's air-quality monitoring system and recreated their impact in a laboratory. He then added bacteria that would cause pneumonia in a human and assessed how many were sticking to the surface of the cells and getting inside them. In normal lungs a few bacteria do that, but in the lung cells that had been artificially exposed to pollution three to four times more did so.

"These findings strongly suggest that particles pollution is a major factor in making children vulnerable to pneumonia. We've shown a very firm link between the two. The study raises strong suspicions that particles cause pneumonia in children," said Grigg. "This is significant because pneumonia causes many admissions of previously healthy children to hospital." Some children with the disease spend several weeks in intensive care.

Previous studies have blamed proximity to a main road for children having higher rates of asthma, wheezing, coughs, ear, nose and throat infections, and food allergies.

A study this month by the Boston-based Health Effects Institute claimed that toxic emissions from vehicles can speed up hardening of the arteries, as well as impairing lung function.

"Strong evidence" suggested that being exposed to traffic fumes can lead to variations in heart rate and other potentially fatal heart complaints, the study said.

Exposure to the burning of wood or coal, or to tobacco smoke, can also increase a child's chances of pneumonia. One study found that secondhand smoke was to blame for 28.7% of all children under five in Vietnam who were admitted to hospital with the condition.

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: "We have known for some time that pollution causes chest problems, such as asthma, in both children and adults. This new research adds to the weight of evidence about the problems of air pollution, especially cars, buses and lorries."

Childhood pneumonia was important because it often led to admission to hospital, costing the NHS hundreds of pounds per bed per day.

The research underlined the need for Britain to move towards greener forms of transport in order to protect public health from traffic fumes, he suggested.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

JOINT WASTE AUTHORITIES

THE JOINT WASTE AUTHORITY

Residents of the local authority jungles are going to have to get used to a new creature. Partly a Frankenstein monster sewn together from bits of four councils, partly a legal genetic modification, it is set to prowl the local rubbish tips in search of savings and profit and opportunity.

TALK ABOUT PREPARING FOR PRIVATISATION !

It will be more difficult to spot, won’t have to say what its going to do, won’t have to say as much as a local council about what it has done and will be made as near immortal as current technology allows. Without clear democratic accountability, and camouflaged as an entirely new legal entity it will be trying to get away with emissions and residue murder….BEWARE…..

Monday 11 January 2010

4,000 or 500,000: CHERNOBYL CASUALTIES


The whole issue of nuclear safety,which has been fought over for 65 years, is rehearsed again in the Guardian article,by John Vidal,yesterday:


At the children's cancer hospital in Minsk, Belarus, and at the Vilne hospital for radiological protection in the east of Ukraine, specialist doctors are in no doubt they are seeing highly unusual rates of cancers, mutations and blood diseases linked to the Chernobyl nuclear accident 24 years ago.

But proving that infant mortality hundreds of miles from the stricken nuclear plant has increased 20-30% in 20 years, or that the many young people suffering from genetic disorders, internal organ deformities and thyroid cancers are the victims of the world's greatest release of radioactivity, is impossible.

The UN's World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency claim that only 56 people have died as a direct result of the radiation released at Chernobyl and that about 4,000 will die from it eventually.

They also say that only a few children have died of cancers since the accident and, that most of the illnesses usually linked to Chernobyl are due to psychological distress, radiophobia or poverty and unhealthy living.

But other reputable scientists researching the most radiation-contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are not convinced. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, another UN agency, predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl; an assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus.

Meanwhile, the Belarus national academy of sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers, and the Ukrainian national commission for radiation protection calculates 500,000 deaths so far.

The mismatches in figures arise because there have been no comprehensive, co-ordinated studies of the health consequences of the accident. This is in contrast to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where official research showed that the main rise in most types of cancer and non-cancer diseases only became apparent years after the atomic bombs fell.

With Chernobyl there have been difficulties in gathering reliable data from areas left in administrative chaos after the accident. Hundreds of thousands of people were moved away from the affected areas, and the break-up of the Soviet Union led to records being lost.

Controversy rages over the agendas of the IAEA, which has promoted civil nuclear power over the past 30 years, and the WHO. The UN accepts only peer-reviewed scientific studies written in certain journals in English, a rule said to exclude dozens of other studies.

Four years ago, an IAEA spokesman said he was confident the WHO figures were correct. And Michael Repacholi, director of the UN Chernobyl forum until 2006, has claimed that even 4,000 eventual deaths could be too high. The main negative health impacts of ­Chernobyl were not caused by the ­radiation but by the fear of it, he claimed.

But today Linda Walker, of the UK Chernobyl Children's Project, which funds Belarus and Ukraine orphanages and holidays for affected children, called for a determined effort to learn about the effects of the disaster. "Parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders … but, as far as we know, no research is being conducted


The reason this issue remains local and relevant is that there will be increasing pressure to burn radioactive waste. Such incinerators need licences, but they are given:
Here is a link to an example in Sidcup:

http://www.srcl.com/srcl-radioactive-waste.html

The Secretary of State also has powers to keep disposal secret (Radioactive Substances Act, 1993, sectn 25), even from local councils. Developers of an incinerator in Spondon recently said that the public didn’t need to know that radioactive waste was to be burned there.

From Hiroshima onwards, nuclear physicists have spoken of the dangers of internal radiation from particles eaten, drunk or breathed in. The current government models ignore these, but the Chernobyl figures are a timely reminder of the dangers.