Nuclear and Toxic Waste, How Many Will Die?
Document Title: Nuclear and Toxic Waste, How
Many Will Die?
Document Ref No: R9704021
First Published: TBA
Publication Date: April 2nd 1997
Author's Name: Father Shay Cullen SSC
MY 13 YEAR OLD NEPHEW DIED OF LEUKEMIA JUST OVER A YEAR AGO. It was a heart
breaking time to know that he was slowly dying before he really begun to
live. He was full of life and love and I have never ceased to ask how it
was taken away from him. Michael had been a sea-scout and had spent time
by the sea not far from Dundalk on the East coast of Ireland . It also happens
to be the place where powerful sea currents carry low level nuclear waste
dumped by a British nuclear fuel processing plant just 45 miles across the
Irish sea at Selfield. In the area around the plant child deaths by blood
cancer is above the national average. It's impossible to prove there is
a direct connection however. It is an on-going controversy in Europe.
At Subic Bay and at Clark Airbase the new inhabitants who eventually work
and live in those areas might too be unsuspecting victims of Leukemia from
buried nuclear waste or be diseased by other toxic chemicals buried in long
forgotten land fills around the bases. Subic and Clark it must be remembered
were staging areas for supplies to the Vietnam war. The deadly defoliant
known as "Agent Orange" which laid waste huge stretches of Vietnamese
forest was likely stored at the bases. I recall visiting the U.S. Navy Magazine
area where drums were stored in open sheds in the forest marked with the
skull and cross bones that indicted a deadly poison substance. "Agent
Orange" for example has reportedly caused cancer in hundreds of U.S.
servicemen who were sent to fight in Vietnam. This deadly chemical contained
dioxine, one of the most poisonous chemicals known to man. It is also contained
in older models of electric transformers and who cares to remember if there
were leaks or spills. These substances never go away unless incinerated
in special places like on Midway Island in the Pacific The chemicals can
leech into the soil and ground water and carry out their deadly games of
sickness and death unseen and unknown for hundreds of years.
In June 1990 a Los Angeles Times report reported that David Berteau , a
senior civilian Pentagon official in charge of environmental problems admitted
that the U.S. military "poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic Bay
in the Philippines" Berteau was reported as saying, "If there's
a horror story out there, Subic may be it." Evidence of this possible
"Horror" can be gleaned from an advertisement in the August 1991
issue of Defense Cleanup Magazine that invited contractors to bid on a contract
to remove more than 200 tons of hazardous wastes at Subic. There are no
reports that they ever did. It's a chilling prospect .
A widely quoted report of April 1991 to the U.S. Congress Armed Services
Committee made by Rep. Richard Ray, who is chair-person of the environmental
restoration panel, said that U.S. Department of Defense policy was "largely
ignored" on Pacific bases. In the Los Angeles Times report a U.S. Air
Force official admitted that no assessment of the ecological damage to Clark
had been done. He is quoted as saying, " We comply with host country
laws. In the Philippines, there are none, so we are not in violation of
any." Of course there are stringent laws on the environment in the
Philippines and ignorance of them is no excuse for polluting the area and
leaving it in a dangerous condition. In the United States one study shows
that there are a whopping 14,401 "Toxic hot spots " in 1,579 military
bases there. So how much more likely is the neglect to be away from home.
I admire Department of the Environment and Natural Resources Undersecretary
Delfin Ganapin Jr. who announced that the DENR is forming a a technical
panel to access the extent of the environmental damage inside the bases.
The U.S. will also form a team he said. We earnestly hope so. However what
we also need is an independent party without vested interests, Philippines
environmentalists and a team from Greenpeace ought to come and make the
tests.
If the U.S. Military officials are sincere and many of them surely are then
they will be open to the environmentalists. The recent deal between Westinghouse
and the Philippines Government to reach an out of court settlement by paying
compensation to the Philippines government is a sort of victory but rehabilitating
the Nuclear power Plant in Morong, Bataan for operation is going to be a
cause of another environmental battle. We have enough environmental problems
as it is.
