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Background
For thousands of years, people living in the tiny Pacific Island countries (PICs) have lived in close harmony with their environment. Their lifestyle is organised around the warm temperatures and high rainfalls that provide their food and livelihoods.
European settlement connected the islands with the larger world, bringing many improvements but also introducing chemicals such as Dieldrin and Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) to fight diseases and pests. Additionally, capacitors and electrical transformers that contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were brought to the islands to generate electricity for lighting, communication and industry. Many of these introduced chemicals are now known to be extremely toxic, and are referred to as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The use of POPs is banned under the Stockholm Convention, while the Basel and Waigani conventions regulate the transport of stockpiles.
Toxic waste
POPs accumulate in the food chain, creating serious health risks to humans and the environment. In humans, they can cause developmental delays, liver damage and certain cancers and interfere with hormonal function. Young children are particularly vulnerable to these effects. In the hot equatorial regions, POPs evaporate and travel in the air currents to fall with rain and snow near the poles, directly or indirectly causing the death of many Arctic and Antarctic birds, and land and marine animals.
Disposing of POPs is difficult for Pacific Island countries, with their low-lying coral terrain and limited resources. Prior to the 'POPs in PICs' there were many open air dumps of the chemicals and the containers that held them endangering the health of people and the environment.
In the Solomon Islands the highly toxic pesticide Mocap was left in these corroded and leaking drums.
Children often played in the area, unaware of the dangers.
John O'Grady/SPRE
In Fiji, leaking containers, some of which have lost their
labels,
were
stored
in a shed just 80 metres from a farm manager's house.
He
suffered from
severe eye irritation and a skin disorder, both
common
side effects of
exposure to trichlorfon.
John O'Grady/SPREP
In Vanuatu electricity transformers containing polychlorinated biphenyls sit
in the open, close to homes. The families nearby grow vegetables on land
that is probably contaminated.
John O'Grady/SPREP
The clean-up
Recognising the need for improved management of chemicals in the Pacific, the Australian Government, through the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), in cooperation with the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and governments of the Pacific Island countries, undertook an investigation of the size of the problem.
Figure 1, Map of South Pacific
Countries included in the ‘POPs in PICs' program are the Cook Islands,
Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands,
Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
The project, known as ‘POPs in PICs', then employed an international team of waste management and logistics specialists to collect and repackage the chemicals identified during the preliminary investigation. In some instances, additional chemicals were identified as public awareness about POPs increased and more old storage sites were reported.
Figure 2: Summary of activities undertaken during the repackaging stage
People wore protective clothing and face masks during the clean-up and
repackaging of pesticides at Metapona Plains in the Solomon Islands.
Lorrie Graham/AusAID
In Tonga, vermiculite pellets were poured into the transformers casings to
absorb any residual oil which was then repackaged in 205L UN Certified
drums with plastic liners and labelled for shipping.
In Fiji, transformer casings were wrapped in plastic for transport to Australia.
Special import approval was necessary from the Australian Government Department of Environment and Heritage under the Basel and Waigani conventions for the trans-boundary movement of the waste. The chemicals were listed on a manifest before being loaded onto ships for transport to Australia.
The waste was destroyed in a state-of-the-art treatment facility using a process designed by the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organisation (CSIRO). The facility, which is used to treat similar chemicals from within Australia, uses physico-chemical measures that operate under high temperatures and pressures to blow the chemical bonds apart. The molecules recombine as water, carbon dioxide and sodium chloride salt – all harmless substances. Decontaminated transformer casings can be shredded and the metal reused.
The outcomes
The removal of more than 140,000 kilograms of POPs, including 60,000 kilograms of transformer casings, will lead to major health and environmental benefits for the populations of the 12 Pacific Island countries involved in the 'POPs in PICs' project.
Radio and television broadcasts increased the community's awareness of the dangers of toxic waste to their health and to the environment. Government officials, chemicals users, non-government organisations and the communities all learned how to better identify and manage dangerous chemicals.
Environmental authorities in each country now are more able to manage toxic waste by being actively involved in creating inventories of and the repackaging and removing POPs. This will assist them develop national implementation plans, as required under the Stockholm Convention.
Going further
Pacific Regional Environmental Programme: http://www.sprep.org
United Nations Environment Programme, Persistent Organic Pollutants: http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops
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