The New Straits Times, June 10, 2001
ON World Environment Day, June 5, a husband and wife team did Malaysia proud when they won the prestigious Global 500 Award of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Another is the Yayasan Anak Wawasan Alam Malaysia bagging the Global 500 Award in the Youth category (NST, June 6).
World Environment Day is an annual event aimed at stimulating worldwide awareness and action on the environment and its protection. The theme this year is "Connect with world wide web of life".
These are not the only good things to happen to Malaysia at the international level. Recently, Malaysia was also named one of Asia's cleanest countries, together with Japan and Singapore in the latest regional survey by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (IHT, May 28).
On an overall scale from zero to 10 (being the worst), Malaysia scored 4.50, after Japan (3.63) and Singapore (3. 38).
On the contrary, India (8.31) China (8.03), Vietnam (7.63) the Philippines (7.55), Indonesia (7.33) and Hong Kong (7.28) "are perceived to be the most polluted Asia countries", according to the survey.
Thus, it is particularly worrying to read a statement by the Minister of Housing and Local Government that "We have no other choice but to use incinerators to dispose solid waste" (The Star, June 4) as the landfills are overflowing and polluting the surrounding areas.
This is because incinerator technology has its own downside as demonstrated, for example, by Thailand's incinerators in Phuket and Onnut near Bangkok which reportedly emit dioxins into the air.
This is the same infamous Persistent Organic Pollutant released during Britain's foot-and-mouth funeral pyres, according to UK's The Independent on Sunday.
It claimed the dioxin produced by the pyres was enough to deliver a dangerous dose to more than two billion people. Unpublished government figures showed that in the six weeks to April 6, when 500,000 animals were burned, 63 grammes of the deadly substance were emitted, compared to 88 grammes a year produced by Britain's most polluting factories. An indication of how dangerous dioxin is comes from the World Health Organisation that recommends the average-sized person be exposed to no more than 30 billionth of a gramme each year. Dioxin is a carcinogen 1,000 times more lethal than arsenic.
It is a suspected cause of birth defects, and may also prompt human bodies to be resistant to male hormone production.
A Greenpeace official quoted research across the world suggesting that people with a waste incinerator located in their neighbourhood had more daughters than sons. More significantly, many of the male children who were born tended to have female characteristics.
The findings suggest that these boys are likely to suffer from incomplete sexual organ development and sperm and fertility abnormalities. The female children are also subject to the adverse effects of exposure to POP. They too tend to have reproductive problems.
In fact, last month, many countries began to sign the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) in Stockholm.
Given Malaysia's support for the Convention, the minister's statement on the use of incinerators seems to indicate Malaysia is consciously choosing to tamper with the quality of the environment.
While the problem of waste management is real, there must be other alternatives to releasing dioxins in the air.
