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NONGOVERNMENT organizations (NGOs) advocating chemical
safety and public health along with other environmental
groups have welcomed a United Nations-assisted project
that will help rid the Philippines of toxic chemicals
which may cause cancer.
Worth
$11.8 million, the project which intends to remove
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) stockpiles in the
country is entitled “Global Program to Demonstrate the
Viability and Removal of Barriers that Impede Adoption
and Successful implementation of Available,
Noncombustion Technologies for Destroying POPs in the
Philippines.”
Institutions such as the International Agency for
Research on Cancer and the United States Environmental
Protection Agency have already considered PCBs as
cancer-causing substances.
Due to
the danger the chemical poses to humans and the
environment, PCBs were placed on the initial list of
“dirty dozen” toxic chemicals that the international
community agreed to restrict and ultimately eliminate
under the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POPs). The treaty, which the
Philippine Senate ratified in 2004, imposed a ban on the
production of PCBs and gave countries until 2025 to
eliminate the use of PCBs in certain equipment.
The Ban
Toxics!, EcoWaste Coalition, Global Alliance for
Incinerator Alternatives, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and
Health Care Without Harm issued a joint statement
expressing their shared support for the project, which
they believe will demonstrate the viability of
destroying PCBs-containing materials and wastes using a
noncombustion technology, to be carried out with the
critical participation of public-interest NGOs.
“This
project, we hope, will spur public concern and
participation in completing the country’s inventory of
PCBs and in ensuring their safe containment and
destruction or irreversible transformation in an
environmentally sound manner, so that these exceedingly
toxic compounds no longer pose threats to the health of
Filipinos and our environment,” the groups said in a
statement.
“The
project brings together the confluence of interests of
the government, industry and civil society. More
important, the project will help the Philippines achieve
its 2014 deadline for the phase-out of PCB use or
storage as directed by the 2004 DENR [Department of
Environment and Natural Resources] chemical control
order for PCBs, and drive the country to becoming
self-reliant in managing its hazardous wastes using
ecological nonincineration solutions,” the statement
said.
The
project is funded through the Global Environmental
Facility, with the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization as the implementing agency, the DENR-Environment
Management Bureau as the national executing agency, and
the Philippine National Oil Co.-Philippine Alternative
Fuel Corp. as the operating entity.
The
other key project partners are the Manila Electric Co.,
National Power Corp. the National Transmission Corp.,
and the public interest NGOs. |
