Leah So­rias

An­ti-smelter ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of go­ing on a "PR dri­ve" to trick the peo­ple of T&T in­to be­liev­ing smelters are safe. He was re­fer­ring to two Nor­we­gian ex­perts–Dr Bjorn Erik Dahlerg and Jan Yt­tredal–who were brought to T&T by Alutrint Lim­it­ed re­cent­ly to ad­dress the pub­lic's con­cerns about alu­mini­um smelters. Alutrint is the de­vel­op­er of the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar alu­mini­um smelter plant in La Brea. Ac­cord­ing to Alutrint in a full page ad­ver­tise­ment yes­ter­day, the ex­perts were in­te­gral in the "green­ing" of Nor­way's alu­mini­um in­dus­try. Nor­way has sev­en alu­mini­um smelter plants. "Gov­ern­ment's ul­te­ri­or mo­tive was to bring the Nor­we­gians here to trick the peo­ple of T&T and to trick the ju­di­cia­ry," Kublals­ingh said, dur­ing a small protest at Cen­tral Bank's court­yard yes­ter­day.

"They want the Court of Ap­peal to de­cide in their favour, they want to get back the Cer­tifi­cates of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC)." It was in June last year that High Court judge, Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, grant­ed on or­der to quash the de­ci­sion by the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) to is­sue the CEC to Alutrint. As a re­sult of this de­ci­sion, work on the smelter plant was stopped. This meant that the EMA had to go over the en­tire process for the con­struc­tion of the smelter plant. The EMA ap­pealed the judg­ment three weeks lat­er. Kublals­ingh said he ex­pect­ed the Court of Ap­peal to de­cide on the mat­ter soon.

Smelters a threat

Mean­while, Kublals­ingh said that stud­ies have shown that de­spite new smelter­ing tech­nol­o­gy, chem­i­cals used at these plants could cause blad­der and lung can­cer. He made ref­er­ence to a study done on a Nor­we­gian smelter plant by the In­sti­tute of Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Can­cer Re­search lo­cat­ed in Nor­way. The study, ti­tled Mor­tal­i­ty and Can­cer Mor­bid­i­ty in Work­ers from an Alu­mini­um Smelter with Pre­baked Car­bon An­ode, was con­duct­ed by the In­sti­tute in the ear­ly 1990's. Kublals­ingh point­ed out that it un­cov­ered links be­tween blad­der and lung can­cer risks, and cu­mu­la­tive ex­po­sure to coal tar pitch volatilise in the alu­mini­um in­dus­try.

"They al­so had in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that ex­po­sure to tar in the smelter has act­ed on an ear­ly stage in the de­vel­op­ment of these can­cers, fol­lowed by a la­ten­cy pe­ri­od of 30 to 40 years," he said. "This means that when you get the can­cer, you don't re­al­ly know (you have it) un­til 30 to 40 years." He agreed that there were im­proved mit­i­ga­tion stan­dards in the smelter­ing in­dus­try but this did not al­le­vi­ate all chem­i­cal im­pacts. "The smelter­ing in­dus­try is ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous be­cause of the num­ber of chem­i­cals in­volved," Kublals­ingh said. "They (in­dus­try) came up with tech­nol­o­gy where they bake an­ode out­side the smelter plant, so that it is less dan­ger­ous but that does not mit­i­gate ma­jor im­pacts of smelter­ing."