Pollution versus Jobs

Kevin Myers reports on the Asbestos controversy in Ovens, Co. Cork

THE RAYBESTOS Manhattan Plant in Ovens, Co. Cork, is the centre of a conntinuing row after a controversy lasting three years. The plant will figure in a High Court action in October, and the attention of the Committee of Health and Environment of the European Parrliament has been drawn to the affair by the Cork TD and County Council Chairrmal) Donal Creed, an avowed opponent of the plant. Fears of serious pollution of the environment by the plant have been voiced by environmentalists and residents, but Raybestos Manhattan still has the full support of the Industrial Development Authority.

The advertisement three years ago advertising the IDA intentions for the eleven acre Ovens site appeared .only in the Irish Independent and 'not the Cork Examiner, which is more widely read in the area. It did not mention any further processing of asbestos in the proposed plant. Indeed, the IDA regional manager said shortly afterwards that the new plant would be "a clean industry."

Planning permission had been granted and the period allowed for appeal had expired before the residents of Ovens discovered that the new plant in their midst would be processing and emitting what is by EEC standards a highly toxic pollutant.

No laws were contravened here. Plannning legislation does not insist that pubblic should be made aware that a factory will be using asbestos. Nor is there any legal limit to the asbestos fibre pollution caused to the environment by such a factory. The public does not even have the statutory right to know what the levels of such pollution are.

Raybestos Manhattan intended to be exporting ten million car brake pads a year to West Germany by 1978, using over three hundred tons of chrysotile asbestos annually. The IDA, aware of the dangers of asbestos, commissioned the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards to draw up safety guidelines and it sent Dr. Tom McManus to visit assbestos plants in West Germany and the USA to examine safety precautions there. He said he believes, and there is no reason to doubt .him, that t-he Rayybestos plant is now the safest in Europe.

There were two separate installations which required safety precautions. The first was the plant, for which planning permission had already been given; the second was the dump for waste prooducts from the plant, expected to amount to two thirds of a ton a day, a quarter of which could be asbestos. Planning permission had been sought for a quarry at Knockanemore to be used as a dump with a useful life expectancy of seven years. By August 1976, protests against the proposed site had started.

The asbestos was to be in three forms.

Some was to be raw, manufactured assbestos, some would be asbestos bound in with other materials, and some would be the highly dangerous fibrous asbestos from the central dust collector and which would be wetted with water and bagged. Each layer of waste was to be covered by a foot of soil.

Planning for a dump at Knockaneemore, near Ovens, was granted in September, while protestors gathered outside County Hall. The owner of the site had been reluctant to agree to the dumping proposals all through August. By the end of September, Raybestos decided to abandon the Knockanemore dump 'in the interest of community harmony' and search elsewhere.

Raybestos was aware that many of the people in the Ovens area objected to the plant. Writing to the IDA the Rayybestos Managing Director, Ted Deane said, "there is no question that some of the fears expressed by these people are valid in the light of recent publicity with reference to asbestos. There is also little doubt that among all those with whom this matter has been discussed that there are some objectors who are concerned more with property values or who are emotionally biased beyond any degree of reason."

Raybestos brought over from Canada Professor John Corbett McDonald, an expert on asbestos and its related disseases, with the purpose of assuaging the "valid fears". His testimony was so immpressive that the spokesman for the Ovens protesters, John Fahy , resigned.

Professor McDonald later explained what he had told the Ovens protestors. "I emphasised during my recent visit that the essential point was that local monitoring should ensure that operation of the factory did 'not result in any siggnificant increase in the level of. asbestos fibres locally at ground level. I was" assured that the emission standard to be observed would ensure this, and providded this is so, I am completely confident that operation of the plant will not be responsible for the occurrence of any asbestos related disease in the area."

He could not knew that the agreeement which would be reached between Raybestos and Cork County Council almost a year later, would allow an increase of ten thousand times the amount of asbestos in the air around Ovens.

Between September 1976 and Febbruary 1977, Raybestos was in the currious position that the planning permisssion for the plant had been retroactively can elled by the loss of the Knockaneemore dump sire, even though work on the plan ontinued. The Ovens plannning permission had specified that the COL" County Council have details of dumping arrangements. It was a legal limbo from vhich Raybestos has to this day not fully emerged.

On February I th , Cork County Coun il. in a s orrny meeting in County Hall, with demon rratio ns and picketing outside. gave planning permission to Raybesros ° dump waste at a site in the village 0: Ringaskiddy , some twenty miles from the Ovens plant. Present to watch the 27-17 vote were two senior executives of Raybestos International. Among those who voted against plannning permission were Donal Creed TO, now Chairman of the County Council, and Gene Fitzgerald TO, now Minister for Labour.

Protestors appealed against the plannning permission, but it was confirmed by An Bord Pleanala after oral hearings the following June. The new dumping regulations were lighter than those at Knockanemore. About half of the assbestos was to be immobilized in cement pellets which, with the rest of the assbestos, would be put in plastic bags and buried in trenches, under two feet of soil. The planning agreement, however, only insisted on pelletization "where possible": and "where possible" was to be - and is - decided entirely by Rayybestos.

The go-ahead to Raybestos came in September. In that same month, Rayybestos reached its agreement with the Council for maximum pollution levels. A series of readings, paid for by Rayyhestos, had been taken of asbestos levels in the Ovens area before the plant came into operation.

A degree of complexity is involved in explaining the pollution problem. Of the eight readings, two had shown levels of zero nanograms of asbestos per cubic metre of air (a nanogram is a thousand millionth of a gram). All the other readdings registered between .1 and I nanoogram.

In the planning agreement, it was decided that at each site where preeoperational measurements were taken, an increase of up to one thousand times the original asbestos level would be toleerated after the plant came into production. But for the purposes of the plannning permission, all readings of less than one nanogram were to count as one nanogram. In effect, this allows an inncrease of between one and ten thousand times the original asbestos level. The maximum - and general - level allowable for the Ovens area is therefore one thousand nanograms. But the world's experts on asbestos-related diseases in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, have only been able to identify one hundred nanograms as the highest reading for which they could not positively assocciate disease. Planning permission has thus been given for a pollution level ten times greater than the hitilerto highest figure thought safe.

At the dump-site the planning permisssion also allowed for a thousand fold inncrease. If, due to dumping, the regular monitoring reveals an increase over the tolerated maximum, measures should be taken to reduce pollution. If, after six months, the higher levels persist, dummping operations must cease. Since readdings are taken every three months, and it takes about one month for them to be processed, potentially dangerous levels of asbestos could be in the air for up to ten months before dumping is stopped.

The situation at the factory at Ovens is rather different. Planning permission allows for one asbestos fibre per cubic centimetre in the air emitted by the facctory averaged over a twenty four hour period. That is the equivalent of six milllion asbestos fibres every minute. What local people fear is that the "plume", the movement of the continuous mass of polluted air from the plant, might create local concentrations which would not necessarily be noticed in the threeemonthly monitorings carried out by the HRS and paid for by Raybestos. Even if potentially dangerous concentrations were discovered, there is no statutory obligation for Raybestos to halt operaations immediately.

What concerned local people, and beecame the subject of a correspondence bet.ween the Ovens Action Committee and the IDA, was their right of access to information on the monitored level of pollution. When Margaret McFadden of the Ovens Action Committee wrote to the IDA asking for details of monitoring procedures, the IDA regional manager replied that such information could be useful to industrial competitors.

"For this reason," the letter continuued, "we will have to check with the company to ensure that any informaation so released by the IDA would not be detrimental to the company's commmercial well-being, and this we intend to do. In the event of such an approval being forthcoming, I will obviously be in a better position to give a more posiitive reaction to your request."

In other words, nor merely are the residents of the Ovens area not autoomatically allowed to know the levels of pollution which might affect them, they are not allowed to know how the measurement of those levels are made without the authorisation of the commpany responsible for the pollution.

When he learnt of the tolerated pollution levels, John Fahy. the former spokesman for Ovens Action Committee, changed sides again. He rejoined the ranks of the protesters.

Thus feelings were high from September, when the planning permisssion was given, until May. During that period, protesters and Raybestos skirrmished in the law courts and pickets blocked access routes to the dump site. High Court injunctions against the picketers came to no avail.

Finally, on May 15th, violence broke out when Gardai forced their way through a crowd of picketing women and children to let the first lorry-load of waste through to the dump. That night a number of Ringask idd y activists broke into the site and removed the bags of waste. Their mood was not helped by their discovery that none of the assbestos was pelletized, and the bags were dumped back at the Ovens plant. Ted Deane remarked on the cavalier way the' protesters had treated a substance they were supposed to be mortally frightened of.

A peace agreement between the IDA and Ringaskiddy residents brought the dump back into action in June - it had been closed following the violence on May 15th - but only on a temporary basis.

Cork County Council, under EEC regulations, is bound to provide a toxic industrial dump, and Raybestos is gambbling that one will be found soon. The IDA has undertaken to build a factory on the Ringaskiddy site when Raybestos abandons it.

The Council is looking at three sites as possible dumps. One of them is known to be at Nadd , in the Boggeragh mountains, north of Cork City. An action committee to prevent a dump in that area has already been formed. By stalling actions, passive disobedience and a merely competent use of the law, such a committee could delay the connstruction of the new toxic dump. Ringaaskiddy could find it will have its dump longer than it intended.

The irony is that the controversy is about what is almost certainly ·the cleannest asbestos plant in Europe, if not the world. Internal pollution is, according to the latest IIRS figures, one hundred times less than planning permission reequirements. There is no evidence that Raybestos intends to exploit the looppholes in the planning permission ruling. Very probably much of the controversy would disappear if those loopholes were closed.

The original managing director Ted Deane has returned to the USA. During his three year sojourn here, Raybestos Manhattan managed to export just two container loads of brake pads. His successor Patrick Hackett will have to face the next round in the fight against the firm's presence in Ireland in October in a High Court case brought by Cork biologist Rory Finegan. In the short term, Raybestos might survive; but it might well be that asbestos will be connsidered an obsolete and probably unnlawful substance before Raybestos Manhattan has reached the end of its tax holiday here .•

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What is Asbestos?

THE ANCIENT GREEKS called it Carpasian linen. The Romans knew of it, and Charlemagne possessed a napkin made of it. It was reintroducced to Europe in the Middle Ages when Marco Polo brought it from China. It was only in the 19th Cenntury, as the industrial revolution blossomed, that asbestos became widely used.

The term asbestos refers to a family of magnesium silicates. the most irn portant of which is chryysotile, which represents ninety per cent of the world's production of asbestos. A mineral fibre, it is mined and processed in Canada. China, the USSR. and South Africa.

Asbestos has a number of properrties that make it valuable to industry, its fire-resisting characteristics being the best known. Another property has become important in recent years and has relevance to the Ovens conntroversy; that is, its ability to endure friction.

A third property of asbestos first became apparent amongst asbestos workers in South Africa at the turn of the century. Asbestos kills. It can kill in three ways. It can cause asbesstosis, due to the irritation and scarrring of lung tissue by asbestos fibre to the point where the victim is first breathless, and later bedridden and virtually paralyzed because of low oxygen intake. It is a long and terrrible disease and terminal in extremis.

Asbestos can cause mesothelioma, a rare cancer until recently thought to be solely the product of asbestos fibres. Following a study of the unnfortunate village of Varian in Turkey, where over half the deaths in recent years have been due to mesothelioma, it is now thought that volcanic siliicates could also cause the disease. No one has ever survived mesothelioma.

Asbestos fibre can also cause ordinary lung cancer. People who smoke and who have a high exposure to as bestos fibre are ninety times more likely to get lung cancer than other people who smoke.

In addition asbestos fibre can trigger off a number of other chest ailments which can lead to death. The most horrifying aspect of these cancers and diseases is that they may develop up to twenty years or more after exposure to the asbestos fibre.

One crumb of comfort for this country is that the most lethal assbestos, crocidolite, known as blue asbestos, is imported in small quanntities. Most of the approximately six hundred tons used in Ireland each year consists of less toxic chrysotile.