[The following article appeared in the February 19 issue of Direct Action, a revolutionary-socialist newsweekly published in Sydney.
In 1971 the mining industry capitalists, worried by the growing publie anger at their arrogant pollution of the environment, organized a seminar in Melbourne. This seminar, entitled Progress-Mining and Environment, was a cynical attempt to cover up the responsibility of the industry for much of the air and water pollution in this country.
Among the "experts" on the panel was N.C. Ashdown, superintendent of the zine department at the Risdon Works of the Electrolytic Zine Company of Australasia Ltd. Ashdown explained that zine concentrates containing "chiefly zine and sulphur" had been roasted at the plant for fifty-three years, "recently at rates of 1,100 tons per day." The zine content of the ores is converted to zine calcine, "a dusty material," which is then leached with acid to make zinc sulphate, which is then electrolyzed to make zinc. Ashdown went on to say that part of the sulphur derived from the roasting was converted into sulphuric acid, and that another part was dissolved into estuarine water and discharged into the Derwent Estuary.
During his talk Ashdown waxed lyrical about the beneficial aspects of the plant. According to the report, "Slides showed the unaffected green flora of the nearby hills, of clear exit stacks, of green lawns, and a well-kept nine hole golf course within the works boundary."
He went on to explain "
... how a careful, logical approach and continual improvement over many years can produce a mining industry adjacent to a population of 5,000 people per square mile near a plant....
Later it was the task of Sir Henry Somerset to sum up. (Somerset is a director of Associated Pulp and Paper Mills, EZ Industries, Goliath Cement, Humes Ltd., Tioxide Australia, a member of the board of the CSIRO and chancellor of the
University of Tasmania.)
Somerset had the job of doing the biggest whitewash of the whole proceedings. His technique was to boldly and shamelessly tell the biggest lies, to introduce red herrings, and to belittle his critics.
*The mining industry is aware of the problems involved and can handle the situation. It has, however, become the target of ill-informed critics who give little credit for what has been done already."
"It is time that emotion was removed from the scene and some sanity was brought to bear upon the problems." Some people were making political capital out of the situation, he said. "It is a pity that little has been said about beer cans on the roadside and broken bottles on the beaches: and bullet holes in the road signs. This is an intolerable situation. ..." etc., ete., ad nauseum.
Finally, with truly breathtaking gall, Somerset said: "This seminar will certainly have been successful if the man-in-thestreet has become better informed by the publicity which the proceedings have engendered." (All quotations are from the pamphlet Progress—Mining and Environment, published by the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.)
What this double-talk means is "We know what we are doing, but we don't want you to know. This seminar will have been successful if we have whitewashed places like the EZ Works."
And what is the real truth behind Somerset's wafflings and Ashdown's glowing descriptions? Sure, the vegetation is intact: EZ hasn't done for Hobart what the Mt. Lyell smelters did for Queenstown on the West Coast-that is, completely denude the surrounding mountains. The reason for that is simple the people of Hobart wouldn't have allowed it. The silvertails of Lower Sandy Bay wouldn't like Albion Heights stripped of foliage!
Four Great Stains in the River
But if you fly over the Risdon area, you will see four great stains in the water. The Prince of Wales Bay treatment works is first, with a murky cloud of sewage (only 35 percent of all sewage poured into the Derwent is treated even to this standard). Next is the bloodstain from the nearby abattoirs, followed by the two plumes of liquid matter which gust out twenty-four hours a day from the zine works.
What the EZ Company has been doing for the years since World War I is less readily apparent-and therefore more insidious than what happened at Queenstown. For years the EZ Company has been able to deny that anything bad was happening.
But in late 1975, Professor Harry Bloom of the University of Tasmania chemistry department published a report which fingered the EZ Works for turning the Derwent into one of the most heavily polluted rivers in the world, particularly in respect of toxic metals. (Heavy Metals in the Derwent Estuary, September 1975.)
The accompanying table, reproduced from Professor Bloom's report, gives an indication of the seriousness of the situation.
In his conclusion, Bloom states, "The study indicates that the main mechanism of heavy metal pollution in the Derwent River estuary is very likely a cause also for contamination of Hobart and its environs by the same toxic metals. Stockpiled concentrates and residues at the zinc refining company are being swept into the atmosphere by wind action. Leaching of metals into the river takes place by rain action. Other mechanisms such as liquid effluent discharge must add also to the contamination of the estuary." (Heavy Metals in the Derwent Estuary, p. 21.)
In the late 1950s at Minamata Bay, in Kyushu, Japan, there was an outbreak of what has become known as "Minamata Disease" among the fishing people. The cause was traced to a factory producing polyvinyl chloride.
The inhabitants of the area began to display the classical symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning (familiar in the nineteenth century in the hat-making trade, hence the expression "mad as a hatter"). They had such symptoms as tunnel vision, numbness, headaches, weakness, insomnia or drowsiness, loss of memory, intellectual deterioration, slurring of words, trembling, ulceration of the gums, chronic diarrhea, and loosening of teeth. The cats went mad. Children were born with congenital mercury poisoning even though the mothers involved showed no signs of being affected (alkyl mercury can pass through the placental barrier in mammals).
Professor Bloom has said that "although the highest mercury concentration in Derwent muds is second to the highest in Minamata Bay, the many times larger area of the Derwent Estuary ... together with their relative concentrations data, can be shown to indicate that the Derwent muds contain many times is present in Minamata mercury than Bay." (p. 21.)
Mercury is therefore present in the Derwent estuary in alarming proportions. It is readily absorbed into the human body through the mucous membranes, and even through the unbroken skin. In 1967 it was discovered that mercury can be converted into a far more toxic form, methyl mercury, by anaerobic bacteria. This is to say it is produced in conditions where there is an absence of oxygen—a state of affairs to be found in the silt and decaying vegetable and animal matter in the Derwent estuary, particularly with the high discharge rates of raw sewage.
And the damage is permanent. As Margaret Merlini, in an article entitled Heavy Metal Contamination (contained in Impingement of Man on the Oceans edited by Professor Donald Hood), says:
"Heavy metals are insidious due to the fact that they are practically indestructible in an aqueous environment. Even if precipitated or absorbed, the process can be reversible and the metals return to ionic form. If not, the precipitate or particles settle on the bottom to be ingested by benthic organisms. Dilution and dispersion helps minimise the danger to some of the biota, but filter feeding organisms [such as Derwent oysters and mussels- J.T.J are notorious for their ability to concentrate many polyvalent ions-in particular copper, zinc, iron and manga-
" (p.
nese-from very dilute solutions.... 467.)
Ten Percent Zinc in Oysters
Mercury is not the only heavy metal present in large quantities in the River Derwent. Others include: arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, zinc, chromium, cobalt, iron, manganese, and nickel. As we have seen from Professor Bloom's table, the Derwent leads the world in the amounts of some of these metals. A few years ago the Ralphs Bay oyster farms were forced to close when it was found that 10 percent of
Metal Environment
Comment
1100 ug/g mercury Sediments
Exceeded only by Minimata in Japan (2010)
More than 10,000 Sediments
Higher concentrations ug/g zinc than any other well known region
862 ug/g cadmium Sediments
Higher than any reported value elsewhere
1500 ug/g cad-
Dust fallout No report known as mium over Lutana high elsewhere
More than 200
Dried oyster Among highest ever ug/g cadmium reported
100,000 ug/g
Dried oyster Highest ever reported
(10 per cent) zinc 14-16 ug/l mer-
Filtered water Equivalent to worst 12 per cent of direct induscury trial discharges in USA
15 ug/l cadmium
Filtered water More than 10 times as contaminated as Lake Ontario
1500 ug/l zinc
Filtered water Far exceeds highest value reported elsewhere
Zinc, mercury, lead Suspended par- Phytoplankton so overticulates (mainand cadmium loaded by metals as to ly phytoplankbe unable to prevent ton).
spread of metals beyond the Derwent Estuary
Cadmium, lead,
Mussels Far in excess of concentrations reported in mercury mussels from around most of UK coastline
Mercury
Fish Flathead, whiting, bream and shark from the Derwent Estuary should not be eaten: flounder, cod, perch, trumpeter and mackerel are not contaminated
Note: One sample of suspended particulates near the zinc refining plant had a mercury concentration of 5550 ug/l.
This may have arisen from a single particle of mercury contaminated waste. Further sampling and analysis is necessary at this point and the nature of the particles should be determined by electron microscopy.
[In this report, the signs ug/g and ug/l mean micrograms per gram, and micrograms per litre respectively.l the dry weight of the oysters was zine-the highest ever recorded anywhere.
Perhaps even more sinister than the mercury is the presence of the highly toxic cadmium in quantities never before re corded. This was present in the Ralphs Bay oysters along with the zine. Attention should also be drawn to the phenomenon of synergism. Briefly this means that the toxic effects of one trace metal are intensified by the presence of another toxic substance; they make each other worse. It is believed that there is a synergic reaction between zinc and cadmium.
In his report, Bloom draws attention to the outbreak of itai-itai disease among nutritionally deficient people in Japan. This was traced to cadmium fallout from the atmosphere poisoning rice fields. The cadmium fallout on the Hobart suburbs of Lutana and Lindisfarne is the highest ever recorded-and the fallout over Hobart generally is greater than that in the itaiitai disease area of Japan. Bloom expresses concern at the possibility of a cadmium buildup in Hobart soils.
Cadmium is probably more lethal than any other toxic metal-more than lead and mercury, which are also found in phenomenally large quantities in the Derwent
The most immediate effects of area.
chronic cadmium poisoning are damage to the kidneys and the central nervous system, hypertension (high blood pressure), and cancer (on inhalation). Other effects are complete sterility and impotence. It is a particularly nasty substance because it may lie dormant for a long period before overt ill effects are felt on the body. It also causes dental caries, destruction of the sense of smell, and a perpetual watery discharge from the nose.
Work by doctors V.H. Fern and S.J. Carpenter on hamsters has shown that cadmium is a teratogenic substance, that is, it induces monstrous deformations of the fetus. (Teratogenic Effect of Cadmium and Its Inhibition by Zinc, Nature 1967.)
Another practice of the EZ Company is the dumping of "jarosite" (waste material from the plant) in Storm Bay. The company would doubtless justify this vandalism by reference to the great size of the oceans. And there are any number of hack "experts" who are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder and testify to the fact that heavy metals are already present naturally in the environment. But as Margaret Merlini writes: "The vastness of the ocean is often used as an argument for its use in the disposal of man's waste products. It is because of its vastness that care must be taken not to damage the biota since small and often large derangements are not as perceptible as in restricted environments such as lakes and streams." (Hood, p. 467, emphasis in the original.)
EZ Industries is registered in Melbourne. It lists on its board of directors such familiar names as M.L. Baillieu and Sir Henry Somerset. The health and welfare of 150,000 people in southern Tasmania is directly menaced by the activities of this small number of capitalists. They are answerable to no one for their activities. As we have seen earlier in this article, their response to criticism is to lie and to attempt to belittle anyone who dares question their right to despoil the environment.
It is obvious that strong measures are necessary to attempt to clean up the mess and to prevent its recurrence. The chief secretary in the Tasmanian state Labor government is Doug Lowe. Following the release of Professor Bloom's report, Lowe acknowledged that it was a "true, accurate and significant document." He was quoted in the Mercury of October 21, 1975, as saying that enforcement of the act covering waste discharge would be stepped up, and that strengthening of the act could follow. He also announced the setting up of what he called a Heavy Metal Pollution Ad Hoe Committee, with Professor Bloom on it in an advisory capacity.
Lowe is well known for his committees. To many local workers he is known as "the mirror man" (whenever a problem arises he is forever "going to look into it"). Other inventions of this former EZ electrician include the "Redundancy Monitoring Committee," set up following a massive rash of sackings by the EZ Company in early 1975.
There are many rumors circulating in Hobart at present which whisper that the EZ Company will close down its operations and move to another country if there is any serious attempt made to force it to clean up its mess. Because of this, and because of the state Labor government's well-known reverence for the "rights" of capitalist private property, it is quite likely that the government will adopt the approach of burying its head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away. In 1975 it revealed how thoroughly servile it was when it made a halfhearted attempt to impose mining royalties on the big mining companies.
In clear contrast to the timid cover-ups of Lowe and Co., Direct Action puts forward a real program to attack the problem of Derwent pollution.
Firstly we demand that the proceedings of the Heavy Metal Ad Hoc Committee be made public.
Secondly we demand that the trade unions be made a party to the proceedings.
Thirdly we demand that all of the EZ Company's material on Derwent pollution be made public.
Fourthly we demand that the company be forced to immediately take steps to rectify the damage it has already done and that it be forced to institute a crash program to curb its pollution.
Fifthly we demand that if the EZ Company does not do as it is told, that it be nationalized without compensation under workers control. The confiscated profits could then be used to finance a massive cleanup to rectify the mess created by this antisocial monopoly.
Somerset and his ilk have demonstrated that they are concerned purely with private profit at the expense of the health and well-being of the EZ workers and the people of Hobart as a whole. He stands condemned by his own words. "The mining industry is aware of the problems and can handle the situation...." The plant must be taken away from them before they do still further damage.
In 1804 the first convict ships sailed into the River Derwent. They arrived into what one convict, the Tolpuddle martyr George Loveless, transported for organizing a union branch, described as a "verdant prison." Below the snowy summit of Mt. Wellington stretched the clear waters of one of the most beautiful harbors in the world.
Now, only 170 odd years later, untrammeled capitalism has managed to transform the water into poison and showered the foothills of the mountain with deadly dust. The once crystal-clear waters of the estuary used to be inhabited by marine life which ran the whole gamut from plankton to whales. Now, in Professor Bloom's words: "Inside the estuary, at Taroona and in Ralphs Bay, shellfish were less numerous, with mussels predominating. Further upstream, on the western shore, shellfish became impossible to find, until Elwick Bay and further north where mussels could be found. On the eastern shore there was a similar but less dramatic depletion of all species. Along the western shore between Macquarie Point and Dowsing Point, no sign of aquatic life could be found." (Bloom, p. 9.)
References
H. Bloom, Heavy Metals in the Derwent Estuary, University of Tasmania, 1975.
D.W. Connell, Water Pollution, Causes and Effects in Australia, University of Queensland Press, 1974.
Donald W. Hood, ed., Impingement of Man on the Oceans, New York, John Wiley, 1971.
Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Doomsday Book, London, Thames and Hudson, 1970.
The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Progress-Mining and Environment, Melbourne, 1971.
More on India's Tarapur Reactor
T.N. Kaul, India's ambassador to the United States, claims that charges of serious health and safety violations against his country's Tarapur nuclear reactor are baseless.
In a letter to U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, dated February 5, Kaul attempts to rebut accusations against the atomic power plant leveled by Paul Jacobs in the February-March issue of a new magazine, Mother Jones. (See Intercontinental Press, March 1, p. 306.)
Contrary to Jacobs's account, Kaul contends that there have been "no instances of death or illness attributable to radiation exposure either of workers at Tarapur or of any member of the general population in the villages surrounding the Station." According to Jacobs's sources in India, the deaths of at least two workers from such causes have been documented in a suppressed government report.
Kaul continues, "In the near shore region up to 30 kilometers, the concentration of radioactivity in sea water beyond the station is not significantly different from normal background," that is, from the radiation exposure caused by natural sources such as rocks in the earth's surface, rays from outer space, and others.
"No individual exposure from all routes (that is water, land and air) amongst the most exposed groups in the public domain, has been found to exceed even half that due to natural background level which, before we started operating the Reactor, was 60 millirem per annum in that area."
The above paragraph deserves careful rereading. What Kaul has actually admitted is that some individuals living in the area surrounding the reactor are exposed to as much as 50 percent more radiation than normal for the area, thus increasing their likelihood of suffering from cancer or producing malformed children.
A line of reasoning similar to Kaul's was commented on by Gordon Rattray Taylor in The Doomsday Book: Can the World Survive?
"If any public authority proposed to double, say, the number of road accidents he would be condemned as a monster or a madman, yet radiation authorities make such statements all the time."
What Could Be Worse Than an Earthquake?
The almost completed Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, California, stands only 2.5 miles from a geological fault that has in the past been responsible for earthquakes.
A powerful earthquake could potentially rupture the protective container around the radioactive reactor core, releasing deadly particles into the atmosphere.
The $1 billion California reactor was constructed by Pacific Gas & Electric Company, the nation's second largest privately owned electric utility. When the plant was begun, only its twenty-mile proximity to the Rinconada fault and forty-five-mile proximity to the San Andreas fault were known.
Now, however, the Hosgri fault has been discovered, and studies by the U.S. Geological Survey have revealed that it was probably responsible for a 1927 earthquake that registered 7.25 on the Richter scale.
The core container at the Diablo Canyon plant was built to withstand a quake registering at most 6.75.
Watch Those City-Grown Vegetables
Excessive quantities of lead, apparently from automobile exhausts, showed up in fruits and vegetables grown in garden plots in a number of American cities last year, according to a report in the February
22 New York Times.
"In St. Louis," said ecologist Gil Friend, "produce from one community garden showed levels of lead so high that eating large amounts of it would be of questionable safety and a clear danger to children."