Samhain '94 Samhain '94Before interviewing Ralph Ryder, I found myself studying large tomes on chlorine, dioxin, paper, incineration etc.. People who know him or Robert Allen would laugh at the idea: as well as being experts on the subject, they are experts at making it easy to understand. For the past twenty years they have fought the largest industries, educated local communities and hounded those in authority about the dangers of organochlorines.
Organochlorines are compounds which contain both carbon and chlorine molecules. In their simplest form they include many solvents used everyday in paints, correction fluid, thick markers, etc.. At a more complex level, organochlorines are used as weedkillers (defoliants), bleaches and so on. Industrial processes like paper bleaching, phenol production and incineration all produce organochlorines. At the most toxic end of this family of compounds are the furans and dioxins.
Last month the US Environmental Protection Agency issued their three year reassessment of dioxin. Previously, the message from environmentalists had been largely ignored, but with the release of the EPA report there was a sea change. Now an official body from the country responsible for the largest production of dioxin sent out the same message - there is no safe level.
To coincide with the ground-breaking report, a tour of Britain and Ireland by a number of experts in the field of dioxin and other aspects of the chlorine industry was hastily arranged. On the 24th of September the tour arrived in Ireland. On a wet Saturday morning a crowded meeting was addressed by Ralph Ryder of Communities Against Toxics, Robert Allen of Toxcat, Patricia McKenna MEP and John Bowler of Greenpeace. The following day, before his departure for Cork, I spoke to Ralph about the causes and the effects of dioxin and his hopes for the future.
"Men, specifically politicians and industrialists, seem to be totally ignoring the fact that all the evidence indicates that organochlorines are causing women a lot of problems", said Ralph. "The incidence in breast cancer in the industrialised world has gone sky-high. The reason for this is that organochlorines settle in the fats in our bodies. What I can't understand is that we all loved our mums and our wives and have daughters, and the experts don't seem to give a shit. Mary O'Brien, a science worker with Rachel's Hazardous Waste News, said that 'Industry has forced dioxins into our breasts, our balls and our foetuses.' " After dioxin has settled in fat it remains there. There is no metabolic process naturally involving dioxin. Studies have shown the effects of dioxin to include various forms of cancer, diseases of the immune system and arthritis. Other studies link the decrease in sperm mobility and numbers in humans to the increase in dioxin levels worldwide.
"Monsanto [the chemical company best known for Nutrasweet and Agent Orange] have released PCBs [members of the organochlorine family which accumulate in the tissues of animals] into the world which are so persistent that even the polar bears in the Arctic have them. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring said enough, but it was ignored. We are now reaping the rewards of the folly of the people we think are the most intelligent - scientists and chemists. In actual fact they fucked up again. It was experts who built the Titanic, it was experts who built Chernobyl and we all know what happened."
Ralph lives in Ellesmere Port, the home of the largest toxic waste incinerator in Britain. When milk from surrounding farms was tested for dioxin, the government raised the acceptable level for dioxin tenfold to avoid a health scare. Those farms which still failed to comply with the new standards had their milk stocks removed and incinerated at the nearby plant. "We've only got to look at the Irish Sea, the Mersey and other rivers, or Cork Harbour to see how environmentally responsible the chemical industry is. There's no such thing as elected representatives of the people anymore. We're being run by corporations."
At the end of our two hour conversation I asked him what his hopes were. Two sprang to his mind: an immediate and total ban on organochlorines, and for Tranmere Rovers to be promoted to the First Division.
Information on subscriptions or donations to TOXCAT is available from SEANCHAI, 31 Station Road, Little Sutton, South Wirral, L66 1NU; tel./fax +44 (0)51 339 5473. All information from the meeting relating to dioxin and the chemical industry has been given to the library at ENFO, 17 Andrew St., Dublin 2; tel. (01) 679 3144.
Damian Nolan is a member of the TCD Environmental Society.
|
An Caorthann (The Rowan Tree) Irish green-alternative magazine Editor: Laurence Cox Web weaver: Anna Mazzoldi |