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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 6KB | 120 lines

<text> <title> Stop Dumping On The South </title> <article> <hdr> World Press Review, June 1992 The Environment: Stop Dumping on the South </hdr> <body> By Pravin Kumar. From the independent "Financial Express" of New Delhi. The Lure of Loose Laws Industrialized countries, where tight laws and urbanization make it difficult to dispose of hazardous wastes, are using the vast open spaces in developing countries as dumping grounds. In 1987, an Italian entrepreneur shipped 10,000 barrels of chemical waste from the Italian port of Leghorn to the Nigerian port of Koko, from where it was dumped onto the bush. When the perilous nature of the waste came to light, Nigeria asked the Italian government to take it away. It was loaded on the Karin B, which sailed from country to country without being able to unload the cargo. Finally, the Karin B returned the waste to Leghorn. Last year, World Watch magazine reported that Western companies had dumped more than 24 million tons of hazardous waste on Africa alone during 1988. The report says, "Perhaps the ultimate form of hazardous export is the relocation of whole manufacturing plants to parts of the world where manufacturing standards are lax." To cope with their rivals, especially Japanese companies, U.S. firms are moving high technology to industrializing countries. In the automobile industry, for instance, by 1988, captive imports--cars produced offshore but sold under U.S. nameplates--accounted for 20 percent of all U.S. auto imports. Many of these imports came from four industrializing countries--South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil. One attraction for foreign companies is the low wages in developing countries. Another attraction is that most developing countries have little or no environmental or worker-safety regulations. In Mexico, for example, companies such as IBM, General Motors, Sony, and Hitachi have set up plants that manufacture a wide range of products, from automobile parts to high- technology electronic components. The $3 billion now earned by these industries in foreign exchange is second only to Mexico's earnings from gas and oil. These plants (known as maquiladoras) have created severe environmental problems on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Workers live in squatters colonies without heat or electricity. At least ten million gallons of raw sewage from the factories are discharged into the Tijuana river daily, polluting San Diego's beaches. Most of the $192-million cost of the sewage-treatment plants is being paid by the U.S. government, the state of California, and the city of San Diego. Hence, the lower manufacturing cost is offset by the higher taxes being paid by the taxpayers of the industrialized country toward cleaning up the pollution. Industrialized countries have double standards for environmental and worker safety--one for themselves and one for developing countries. The latter group generally does not have the well-funded environmental groups of Europe and the U.S. This situation is exploited by First World corporations. Under Mexican laws, toxic materials imported into the country or produced during manufacture must be re-exported to the country of origin or recycled in Mexico. But according to the Texas Water Commission, only 60 percent of the waste materials ever leave Mexico; the rest--most of it toxic--is disposed of illegally in Mexico's sewers and landfills. Workers in poor countries have lower education and skills than their First World counterparts. They labor in small, crowded factories with old, unsafe machinery. The factories are located in areas inaccessible to health inspectors. This could hardly be said of Union Carbide's Bhopal, India, plant, but the workers there were unaware that the plant was potentially lethal. Even government officials claim that they were ignorant of the dangerous nature of the chemicals being produced in the plant. PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) were banned in the U.S. in 1977 on account of their toxicity, but pregnant Mexican women employed at the Mallory Capacitors plant in Matamoros, Mexico, were required to work with PCBs. Twenty retarded children born to these mothers showed the same kind of retardation seen in children of pregnant mothers exposed to PCBs in Taiwan and Japan. There is a growing realization that all technologies are hazardous, some more than others. Even the seemingly environmentally friendly electronics industry produces hazardous waste, including solvents used for cleaning and drying. While new products will bring in new hazards, old products and processes in new locales also will bring in new hazards. The rapid restructuring of world industrial production will reduce hazards in places that have learned to cope with them and shift hazards to places that lack the knowledge and resources to control them. Fortunately, there is some awareness of the problem. The United Nations World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization now provide some guidance on occupational health and safety to developing countries. But their activities are directed to large employers, whereas the bulk of work sites in developing countries are small. The UN Environment Program and the World Bank now provide location advice and environmental-impact assessments when the host country is not able to do so. While clearing foreign-investment and technology proposals, such bodies should be fully involved. </body> </article> </text>