NZ host Pacific nations in bid to clean up toxic waste

Delegates from NZ, Australia and 12 other Pacific nations met in Wellington today for a three-day workshop on how to reduce contamination by persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as dioxins.

The meeting - co-hosted by the Environment Ministry (MfE) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) - will canvass meeting Stockholm Convention guidelines to reduce and eliminate POPs.

The 12 common chemicals contribute to cancer, birth defects and other health problems, and can stay in the environment for 100 years.

New Zealand bureaucrats will highlight ways to collect obsolete agrichemicals, clean contaminated sites, and set national environmental standards banning activities that release dioxins and other toxics into the air.

Case studies at the workshop will include the clean-up of New Zealand's most contaminated site, the former Fruitgrowers Chemical Company land at Mapua, near Nelson, and bans on pollution such as burning of tyres or oil in the open.

A key speaker at the sessions is John Whitelaw, UNEP's deputy director of chemicals, and a former deputy director of Australia's Environmental Protection Agency.

The 2001 Stockholm Convention requires signatory countries to commit to a longterm international effort to reduce or eliminate health and environmental risks from specific chemicals. New Zealand only ratified it last year.

The target chemicals include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), dioxins and furans, and nine organochlorine pesticides: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, hexachlorobenzene and toxaphene -- commonly referred to as the "dirty dozen".

New Zealand has said it will reduce dioxin emissions, and clean up contaminated sites and waste pesticides, as well as banning the manufacture and use of the pesticides.

But though the pesticides were widely used from the mid-1940s to the 1970s, including DDT and dieldrin, all of them except PCP were formally deregistered by the Pesticides Board in 1989 and PCP was deregistered in 1991.

PCBs were widely used in industry -- including as electrical transformer fluids, hydraulic fluids, some paints and printing inks -- but most New Zealand stocks of PCBs have already been shipped overseas and destroyed in a nationwide recall.

The chlorinated chemicals, PCP, and 2,4,5-T contained impurities of dioxin, a generic term to describe a family of chemicals containing chlorine called dioxins and furans.

PCP is no longer widely used in the timber industry as a fungicide and preservative treatment.

Separately, environmental lobbyists campaigning against the discharge of dioxin into air and water in New Zealand have announced a series of four public meetings and a protest march in the North Island.

The People Poisoned Daily tour will start on Friday to publicise a report calling for urgent action to stop the discharge of industrial waste containing dioxins.

It is also seeking free healthcare for people affected by the dioxins, with the care continuing for a further six generations to cover children, grandchildren and other descendents who may be affected by gene defects caused by the dioxins.

A spokesperson for the campaign, Jo Harawira, said that though dioxins were banned by international laws, industries in New Zealand were still discharging them.

The campaign, organised by Greenpeace, Sawmill Workers Against Poisons, Vietnam Veterans of Aotearoa, the Paritutu Dioxin Investigation Group, and a Maori organics group, Te Waka Kai Ora, will start on Friday at Whakatane with a public meeting.

Another public meeting will be held in Rotorua on Saturday, and on Sunday there will be a march in New Plymouth to call for the Dow chemical company there to set up a national fund to compensate people affected by dioxins in its products.

Two more public meetings will be held, in Wanganui on Monday and Wellington on Tuesday.

- NZPA