"Nessuno potra' provare che cosa ci ha ucciso"
Pancevo: gli agenti chimici rilasciati in seguito al bombardamento della
NATO infettano la citta' serba
'No one will be able to prove what killed us'
Chemicals released after Nato bombing infect Serbian
city
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Tuesday May 15, 2001
The Guardian
When the Nato bombs started to fall on Pancevo's
petro-chemical factory, 10 miles east of Belgrade next
to the Danube in Serbia, the locals thought it must be
a mistake. Surely, even in war, no one would risk
releasing deadly chemicals less than two miles from a
city.
But, as the attacks continued, it was clear that they
were being aimed at storage tanks that contained the
raw materials for PVC.
As the air strikes continued, heroic efforts were made
to load them into rail tankers to save the civilian
population. But it was all in vain - 80,000 people
were exposed to a dose of one chemical 10,500 times
above the safe limit.
At the height of the Nato offensive, the bombing of
Pancevo was seen as a victory against a strategic
target because of its spectacularly burning oil
refinery, with only a footnote of regret about the
contamination of the canal that feeds into the Danube.
But two years on, the long-term damages caused to the
city, its people and their water supply are only now
being fully realised and dealt with. The UN
Environment Programme (Unep) and the city are
desperately trying to scrape together the funds to
save the area from continuing environmental disaster.
Already, 100 workers who tried to stop the leaks and
limit the damage of chemicals flowing into the ground
have been declared permanent invalids because of lung
damage. A number of young men have had unexplained
heart trouble.
Two years after the bombing, despite two winters of
heavy rains to cleanse the soil, still nothing grows
around the petrochemical works. The earth has patches
of dark-green algae in puddles but no other life;
elsewhere, the countryside is alive with verdant
growth.
The newly elected mayor of Pancevo, Borislava Kruska,
a quietly spoken woman, says by the time Nato experts
had arrived months after the bombing, the chemicals on
the surface, which were causing air pollution, had
evaporated.
Most of the chemicals, however, remain just below the
surface.
"It is what I call the perfect murder. Nobody will be
able to prove what killed us," she said. Unep says a
saturation level of one part per million of vinyl
chloride monomer (VCM) in the air is enough to trigger
cancer of the liver. It can cause brain tumours and
attacks the nervous system.
In Pancevo, the saturation reached 10,500 parts per
million.
It is too early to see the effects on the human
population, but there are alarming signs that
something is wrong: A rare bone cancer, previously
restricted to very old dogs, has being found in
abundance in puppies and adolescents.
And VCM is not the mayor's only worry. There is
another PVC chemical, 1,2-dichloroethane (EDC), which
is highly toxic and particularly attacks the liver and
kidneys. At least 2,000 tonnes of it leaked into the
ground after the bombing.
Eating all root vegetables in Pancevo has been banned
and tests show that EDC has penetrated deep into the
ground, close to the city's water supply.
A group of experts from several countries is trying to
work out how to recover the EDC before it reaches the
water table. An estimated 130,000 people use the local
water pumped from the ground.
Unep estimates that the pollution problem will cost
�14m to fix; so far it has raised �4.5m from the
international community that bombed Pancevo. Holes
will need to be drilled to pump out the contaminated
water before it reaches the water table.
The canal, which runs from the bombed water-treatment
plant at the factory to the Danube, needs �4m worth of
dredging to prevent the contaminants leaking into
Europe's longest river.
Some urgent remedial measures have been taken. In one
area, Unep has removed 80cms (31.5in) of topsoil to
collect most of the eight tonnes of mercury released
by the bombing.
The technical manager of the factory, Dmitar
Krivokuca, who is working with UNEP on the clean up,
said: "There has been some poisoning of our workers
and people are in jeopardy the whole time, but we have
to clear this up if we are going to restart and
provide employment."
The neighbouring oil refinery has started work again
providing the first jobs in an area that had 10,000
industrial workers before the war.
The smell of sulphur now dominates from the cheap
Russian oil being processed, but filters will be
fitted when funds permit.
The mayor said: "We are not pretending that before the
bombing the area was not polluted, it was, but not on
this scale.
"As we go on living and dying in Pancevo, we will
never be able to prove what is killing us. No
population has been exposed to this level of these
chemicals anywhere in the world. What we need is help
to stop it getting worse."
---
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Pancevo: gli agenti chimici rilasciati in seguito al bombardamento della
NATO infettano la citta' serba
'No one will be able to prove what killed us'
Chemicals released after Nato bombing infect Serbian
city
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Tuesday May 15, 2001
The Guardian
When the Nato bombs started to fall on Pancevo's
petro-chemical factory, 10 miles east of Belgrade next
to the Danube in Serbia, the locals thought it must be
a mistake. Surely, even in war, no one would risk
releasing deadly chemicals less than two miles from a
city.
But, as the attacks continued, it was clear that they
were being aimed at storage tanks that contained the
raw materials for PVC.
As the air strikes continued, heroic efforts were made
to load them into rail tankers to save the civilian
population. But it was all in vain - 80,000 people
were exposed to a dose of one chemical 10,500 times
above the safe limit.
At the height of the Nato offensive, the bombing of
Pancevo was seen as a victory against a strategic
target because of its spectacularly burning oil
refinery, with only a footnote of regret about the
contamination of the canal that feeds into the Danube.
But two years on, the long-term damages caused to the
city, its people and their water supply are only now
being fully realised and dealt with. The UN
Environment Programme (Unep) and the city are
desperately trying to scrape together the funds to
save the area from continuing environmental disaster.
Already, 100 workers who tried to stop the leaks and
limit the damage of chemicals flowing into the ground
have been declared permanent invalids because of lung
damage. A number of young men have had unexplained
heart trouble.
Two years after the bombing, despite two winters of
heavy rains to cleanse the soil, still nothing grows
around the petrochemical works. The earth has patches
of dark-green algae in puddles but no other life;
elsewhere, the countryside is alive with verdant
growth.
The newly elected mayor of Pancevo, Borislava Kruska,
a quietly spoken woman, says by the time Nato experts
had arrived months after the bombing, the chemicals on
the surface, which were causing air pollution, had
evaporated.
Most of the chemicals, however, remain just below the
surface.
"It is what I call the perfect murder. Nobody will be
able to prove what killed us," she said. Unep says a
saturation level of one part per million of vinyl
chloride monomer (VCM) in the air is enough to trigger
cancer of the liver. It can cause brain tumours and
attacks the nervous system.
In Pancevo, the saturation reached 10,500 parts per
million.
It is too early to see the effects on the human
population, but there are alarming signs that
something is wrong: A rare bone cancer, previously
restricted to very old dogs, has being found in
abundance in puppies and adolescents.
And VCM is not the mayor's only worry. There is
another PVC chemical, 1,2-dichloroethane (EDC), which
is highly toxic and particularly attacks the liver and
kidneys. At least 2,000 tonnes of it leaked into the
ground after the bombing.
Eating all root vegetables in Pancevo has been banned
and tests show that EDC has penetrated deep into the
ground, close to the city's water supply.
A group of experts from several countries is trying to
work out how to recover the EDC before it reaches the
water table. An estimated 130,000 people use the local
water pumped from the ground.
Unep estimates that the pollution problem will cost
�14m to fix; so far it has raised �4.5m from the
international community that bombed Pancevo. Holes
will need to be drilled to pump out the contaminated
water before it reaches the water table.
The canal, which runs from the bombed water-treatment
plant at the factory to the Danube, needs �4m worth of
dredging to prevent the contaminants leaking into
Europe's longest river.
Some urgent remedial measures have been taken. In one
area, Unep has removed 80cms (31.5in) of topsoil to
collect most of the eight tonnes of mercury released
by the bombing.
The technical manager of the factory, Dmitar
Krivokuca, who is working with UNEP on the clean up,
said: "There has been some poisoning of our workers
and people are in jeopardy the whole time, but we have
to clear this up if we are going to restart and
provide employment."
The neighbouring oil refinery has started work again
providing the first jobs in an area that had 10,000
industrial workers before the war.
The smell of sulphur now dominates from the cheap
Russian oil being processed, but filters will be
fitted when funds permit.
The mayor said: "We are not pretending that before the
bombing the area was not polluted, it was, but not on
this scale.
"As we go on living and dying in Pancevo, we will
never be able to prove what is killing us. No
population has been exposed to this level of these
chemicals anywhere in the world. What we need is help
to stop it getting worse."
---
Questa lista e' provvisoriamente curata da componenti della
ASSEMBLEA ANTIMPERIALISTA (ex Coord. Naz. "La Jugoslavia Vivra'"):
> http://www.tuttinlotta.org
I documenti distribuiti non rispecchiano necessariamente le
opinioni delle realta' che compongono questa struttura, ma
vengono fatti circolare per il loro contenuto informativo al
solo scopo di segnalazione e commento ("for fair use only").
Archivio:
> http://www.domeus.it/circles/jugoinfo oppure:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/messages
Per iscriversi al bollettino: <jugoinfo-subscribe@...>
Per cancellarsi: <jugoinfo-unsubscribe@...>
Per inviare materiali e commenti: <jugocoord@...>
Sito WEB (non aggiornato):
> http://digilander.iol.it/lajugoslaviavivra
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gli internazionali d'italia si avvicinano!!
Tutte le news sugli ultimi risultati, notizie inedite
e interviste nella Newsletter piu' in palla del momento!!!
Iscriviti a tennisnews-subscribe@...
Tennis.it ti offrira' il meglio di Roma direttamente nella tua casella email
http://www.domeus.it/ad1776970/www.domeus.it
Se vuoi cancellarti da questo gruppo, clicca qui: http://www.domeus.it/info/unsubscribe