No consensus on clean up standards to make hill station free from mercury contamination
29 Aug 2015 5:26 AM GMT
HUL stuck to its site specific target level of 20 mg/kg, which was disputed by environmentalists
Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board logo
Chennai: Coming as a big disappointment for people of Kodaikanal, the ‘much-hyped’ meeting convened by Tamil Nadu Pollution Control (TNPCB) with stakeholders after a gap of over 10 years to decide on clean up standards to make hill station free from mercury contamination yielded no result. The four-hour close door meeting held at the conference hall in TNPCB office was inconclusive as there was no consensus on the clean up standards. The Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) stuck to its site specific target level of 20 mg/kg, which was disputed by environmentalists and representatives of ex-workers of now defunct HUL thermometer factory.
Member of Local Area Monitoring Committee Mr Navroz Mody, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace and who first discovered clandestine way of disposing mercury-filled scrap by HUL threatening local ecosystem, told DC that the company and its consultants National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and Environmental Resources Management (ERM) maintained that 20 mg/kg was good enough and people living thereafter will have no adverse health effects.
“When we submitted our side of argument and the international standards followed across the globe, the company offered to share the scientific data on how it has come to 20 mg/kg clean-up standard. We don’t want to halt the clean-up process for which people of Kodaikanal have been waiting for 14 years, but the process shouldn’t be a mere eyewash. This apart, the company can’t treat the site as residential area because it’s part of critical Pambar Shola forest stretch”, he said.
Sources said TNPCB chairperson K. Skandan was keen to commence the clean up and reportedly asked the HUL to submit the scientific data to all the stakeholders and invited objections. “Let them (stakeholders) critic it and will put it before Scientific Expert Committee to take a final decision”, Mr Skandan was quoted saying by a source present in the meeting. Kodaikanal municipality chairman M. Sridhar, who was also present in the meeting, said 20 mg/kg was not acceptable.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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