Rubble, rotten food, plastic bags and toxic powders are just some of the hazards in dumping spots.
|||Cape Town - There are almost a thousand illegal dumping hot spots in Cape Town, it has been revealed. The staggering figure has emerged in the wake of a three-year-old girl’s death after being exposed to chemical waste dumped near N2 Gateway homes in Delft this week.
Jordan Lewis is said to have ingested a toxic substance dumped on the side of the road. At least 20 more adults and children were treated in hospital. They have since been discharged.
Leon Wentzel, assistant chief for the city’s marine and environmental law enforcement, said private and contracted waste removal companies were targeting playgrounds and schools and the outskirts of neighbourhoods to upend their waste.
Waste disposed of in these areas posed a massive health risk.
Rico Euripidou, a toxicologist and researcher with environmental justice NGO groundWork, added that more than half of the country’s municipal landfills were unregulated – making them vulnerable to the dumping of toxic and medical waste.
“There are only three sites in the country where hazardous chemical materials can be disposed of. One is in Cape Town at Vissershok landfill site. The process is expensive and mired with paperwork. Regulation is slack, law enforcement is weak and prosecution is often unlikely.”
In an effort to clamp down, city by-laws will soon see the vehicles of people caught dumping illegally impounded. At the moment, people caught are fined around R2 500.
Earlier this year, Rustim Keraan, director for the city’s Solid Waste Management, said illegal dumping was the biggest problem his department faced. Dumping cost the city around R183 000 a day to clean up.
Bags of toxic chemicals, specifically sodium nitrate HQ (untreated) and trisodium phosphate, were removed from the site by the city on Monday evening.
The hunt for those behind the illegal dumping has drawn investigators from two top companies to Cape Town. Police are investigating a case of illegal dumping and have opened an inquest docket into the death.
Late on Tuesday, Sasol dispatched a team of investigators to the scene. They will assist police in finding the culprits who dumped toxic chemicals. Sasol confirmed that one of its products – “non-toxic” hydrogenated coco-glycerides – was found at the site.
Sasol spokesman Alex Anderson said on Tuesday that the company would look at product identification and barcodes to pinpoint the customer who purchased the product and track its subsequent movement. This could potentially lead police to the originator of the poisonous waste.
Euripidou said it might not be enough merely to find the individual or company who dumped the waste. This is because the onus of responsibility lies, at least in part, with the generator of the waste or at the highest end of “the chain of custody”.
He said “product stewardship” meant that “progressive companies” mandatorily took on at least part of the responsibility when they distributed hazardous material.
Sasol’s team follows investigators from chemical company BASF who arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday morning. BASF said it was the producer of sodium nitrate, a compound which a safety data sheet from the company describes as hazardous.
“There is a risk of damage to the blood after a single uptake of large quantities,” the sheet reads under the heading “Acute Toxicity”.
BASF spokeswoman Petra Bezuidenhout said the compound was mainly used for water treatment and in the mining industry and was produced by BASF in Germany.
Crown National’s product Emulsipro 90 is an edible soya extract which is used to provide texture to processed meat systems. Protea Mining Chemicals did not respond to Cape Argus queries, despite being the only company identified by a response from police. Yet the city has linked a non-toxic substance – guar gum powder – to the company.
The origin company/producer of the trisodium phosphate, a compound which the US National Library of Medicine describes as a potentially deadly poison, remains a mystery.
daneel.knoetze@inl.co.za
kieran.legg@inl.co.za
Cape Argus