public services

Toxic waste project studied

la prensa

growing threat: University research has shown that untreated hazardous wastes from hospitals and industries are endangering the country’s deep ground water sources.1133522

Results from a joint study on the impact of hazardous waste on human and environmental health by the University of Panama, the Panama Fire Department and various international health agencies showed that harmful residues of medical and industrial waste dumped indiscriminately in public landfills is affecting the quality of the country’s ground water.

Prodded by those findings, local researchers have proposed an ambitious project of creating a hazardous waste management system aimed at diminishing the possibility that corrosive and radioactive chemicals can enter into water supplies and the air.

Enrique Lau, director of Planning and Evaluation at the university, said the project’s organizers envision the construction of a special garbage treatment plant to be built on a eight-hectare lot owned by the university in Tocumen.

At the proposed site, hazardous wastes generated throughout the country will be processed according to their chemical bases, with the ultimate goal of separating the toxic matter from the inert or benign materials that can be recycled, Lau said.

Health authorities are currently evaluating proposals from hazardous waste management companies from France, Spain, Mexico and Argentina.

The crucial detail in those evaluations, however, is likely to be cost. As Lau explained, the project has been allotted a budget of just $4 million. Even so, the university researcher claimed that the project’s total cost can’t be estimated until the chosen company signs on as a partner of the consortium.

In addition to the cost, the management company’s system must comply with the 1989 Basel Convention’s provisions which dictates which wastes are considered toxic and how they should be treated, transferred and contained.

Lau also indicated that the project’s plans must be supported by legislation to ensure that any individual or company that generates toxic wastes be held responsible for its proper treatment.

“The Pan American Health Organization conducted a risk map of where these places are located in the country so that we can come directly to them. This list will be updated to take effective coverage of the project,” said Anabel Tatis, another researcher involved in the project.

Additionally, Lau said the project wouldn’t be complete without an awareness campaign aimed at educating the population not to combine potentially hazardous garbage such as computers, light bulbs or batteries, with organic waste.

Researchers are training workers in the process of collection and treatment of toxic materials, though Lau noted that it may be years before the treatment plant project really gets underway. Health authorities said the processing of hazardous wastes will begin within the metropolitan area sometime next year, and is expected to expand across the country by 2011.