opinion

At the mountain of madness

David Pace takes a trip to Planet Maghtab, and what he sees brings him down to earth with a bump

F rom up here, the view is fantastic and the miasma is over-powering. I had to put a hanky over my mouth. The smell was almost unbearable — a mixture of expired disinfectant, decaying animals and rotting vegetable matter.

A few steps away, a strong chemical smell wafted over threatening to choke me. A walk of about 10 metres over crushed rock brought me near a small heap of blue material out of which smoke was coming lazily coming. I quickly hurried away from it.

It looked as if I had landed on another planet. A planet with a deadly atmosphere and lethal terrain.

This was my experience of the Maghtab Landfill and I shuddered to think about the workers, every day exposed to such an extremely unhealthy environment. The people who lived in the vicinity and the farmers who work the land a few hundred metres away. They were all in danger.

The Maghtab Landfill is nothing more than a hell-hole that has been receiving rubbish and construction debris since 1975. There doesn’t seem to be a policy of what should and should not be dumped here. Suspicious looking heaps of chemicals and questionable waste products are strewn across the mound and give rise to weird chemical aromas.

From several places, smoke was slowly leaking out proving that buried material, probably plastic and chemical matter were smouldering deep beneath the festering garbage.

Last month, the Environment Minister revealed that nine proposals for a national waste management system were received from various companies. Presumably they are still being evaluated.

The waste recycling consultant, James McTear, advised against meddling with the dump until the appropriate tests are made to determine what kind of infernal stuff the landfill contains.

The Times also quoted Dr. Zammit Dimech who said that construction waste was still going to be dumped on top of the domestic waste at Maghtab. It is true that the domestic waste will keep all the nasty stuff bottled in, but I cannot understand why he refuses to authorise re-filling of some of the government-owned quarries with the extra construction waste. At least, this would stabilise the size of the Landfill and keep it from spilling into the coast road.

On top of the mound, a source of air pollution is smoke coming out of a number of locations. The size of the particulate matter within the smoke has not been measured and tested. If the particles are very small, less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, (one micrometre = one millionth of a metre) they can damage the respiratory system causing asthma and irritation of the lungs and bronchii. If the particles are of a chemical nature, they may also increase the incidence of throat, tracheal, bronchial and lung cancer.

The middle reaches of the mound are "embellished" by piles of dust. This is more of a nuisance than a poison. Nonetheless, one dust pile looked suspiciously like cement and studies have shown that cement dust (which consists of very fine particles less than four micrometres in diameter) can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause cancer.

Most serious is the smoke given off by domestic and industrial waste. Plastic, paints, varnish, anti-rust compounds and treated wood products contain a wide variety of toxic chemicals including benzene, toluene and xylene (highly carcinogenic), dioxin (whose many dubious virtues were highlighted last week), chlorinated hydrocarbons from sprays, detergents and plastics (which destroy the ozone layer and are toxic) and heavy metal compounds.

The site provides many sources of heavy metal contamination. In one area, a pool of what looked like dry paint is a good source of lead, zinc, copper and tin. Broken radios, TV sets and numerous appliances all of which contain electronic components will contain silicon, germanium, arsenic, gallium and thallium. The last three are certified poisons.

Batteries are another source of heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, and some could be seen scattered around the place. A workman said that batteries are sometimes harvested for lead plates and there weren’t so many on that day.

But why are heavy metals so dangerous?

Not the music, the poison
Heavy metals are those metals which have a density greater than 5 g/cm3 (g/cm3 – grams per cubic centimetre — that is, a cube with each side measuring a centimetre long weighs 5 grams. For example, iron has a density of about 8 g/cm3, lead 11g/cm3 and mercury 13g/cm3).

The most dangerous are cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganes, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, silver, tin and zinc. Most are trace elements essential in the normal running of the body. In high concentrations, they are all toxic.

Abroad, most heavy metal poisoning is associated with the mining industry and coal-burning. Industrial activities such as electroplating and galvanizing, and products such as lead shot and fungicides all contribute a variety of heavy metals to the environment.

Heavy metal poisoning is insidious because it is concentrated in the body and the effects start to be felt after a lengthy exposure. A number of studies have been made on different workers. I can state (from experience) that a heavy metal such as lead have a negative effect on the body.

During my time working as a Medical Laboratory Technologist, I sometimes studied the blood picture of workers in the battery industry who are regularly monitored for high lead concentrations.

The procedure required that I look at the blood under a high-powered microscope and observe any changes in the different types of blood-cells. Some did show atypical changes due to high levels of lead and the workers were advised to take some leave from work until the changes disappeared.

More exhaustive studies abroad have found a link between nerve degeneration and high levels of lead and mercury. Mercury poisoning became infamous with the onset of the Minamata’s Disease in Japan. This was caused by the indiscriminate dumping of industrial effluent into Minamata Bay and many people, mostly fisherman began suffering from uncontrollable shuddering due to nerve damage induced by mercury toxicity. Later on, many of their children were born deformed and disabled.

What about studies on heavy metal contamination in the Maghtab Landfill? I’m sure the government has whole cupboards full of research papers! This is a horrifying state of affairs and the longer the Government takes to solve the Maghtab problem, the greater the risk for the people living in the area.

Malta is so small that poisons leaching out of the Maghtab Landfill will contaminate nearby arable land and the sea. And it is not just a local effect, the poisons will spread and affect a much greater area.

Many will shrug and call me an alarmist. So did most of the people at Minamata Bay; and the culprits kept dumping mercury-rich chemicals into the sea for 10 whole years until they were caught. By that time, it was too late. People had died and children were suffering.

At least we have the benefit of knowing that environmental poisons can kill. But why do we always wait until something really bad happens?