Rachel's Democracy & Health News #834 Environment, health, jobs and justice--Wh

[Guest guest]

rachel

Rachel's News #834: Year in Review, Pt. 1

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:16:20 -0500

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #834

" Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide? "

Thursday, December 22, 2005

www.rachel.org -- To make a secure donation,

 

 

 

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Featured stories in this issue...

 

2005 in Review: Dark Clouds on the Technology Horizon

For nanotechnology, the year 2005 started pretty well, but as the

months slipped by, bad news clouded the future for this most-powerful

technology. Now the industry itself is asking to be " regulated " --

perhaps because they know how well " regulation " has served the

chemical and nuclear industries.

 

In Canada, Chippewa Girls Now Outnumber Boys by Far

Among the Chippewa people in Canada, two girls are born for every

boy -- a completely unnatural ratio. Are hormone-disrupting chemicals

responsible?

 

A Huge Fight Against the Chemical Industry Needs You to Weigh in

A huge fight is going on in Washington state, where the legislature

is considering a bill to ban one of the worst chemicals around -- a

flame retardent known as 'deca.' The chemical industry is pouring the

bucks into this fight, so we need to show people-power in response.

You can help, and it'll just take a minute of your time.

 

The Cost of Gold -- 30 Tons an Ounce

During the holiday season, the glitter of gold is everywhere -- a

reminder of our stupendous wealth, but also a reminder of something

else. We are now mining ores that contain only one part per million of

gold, so every ounce of the precious metal leaves behind 30 tons of

broken rock, ruined soil, and poisonous waste. And, as always, the

least-fortunate pay the costs while the most-fortunate get the gold.

 

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News, Dec. 22, 2005

 

2005 IN REVIEW: DARK CLOUDS ON THE TECHNOLOGY HORIZON

 

Nanotech problems pile up and the industry asks to be regulated

 

By Peter Montague

 

The year 2005 began brightly enough for U.S. evangelists of

nanotechnology -- the science and engineering of things so small they

are measured in billionths of a meter and are invisible even under a

microscope. When substances are broken into nano-sized particles,

their properties change dramatically -- metals may become transparent,

inert substances may suddenly become chemically reactive, and

dielectrics may begin to conduct electricity. The nano world turns

ordinary reality topsy turvy -- all very mysterious and marvellous,

really.

 

For at least 10 years the U.S. has been banking on nanotechnology to

fuel a new industrial revolution, pump up flagging rates of economic

growth and make boatloads of money for already-wealthy investors, with

perhaps some benefits trickling down to ordinary earthlings. Indeed,

many people have pinned their hopes for the future of the U.S. economy

on nanotech. Of course, some nano evangelists go even further. In a

report sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the

Department of Commerce, evangelists who are promoting this technology

say it is " essential to the future of humanity " because it holds the

promise of " world peace, universal prosperity, and evolution to a

higher level of compassion and accomplishment. " [1] This is

technological evangelism at its snake oil best.

 

Nanotech has in fact been expanding at breakneck speed. The U.S. is

investing more money, securing more patents (more than 1000 per year),

and publishing more scientific papers on nanotechnology than

competitors in any other country. The National Science Foundation

estimates that by 2015 (a short 10 years from now) nanotech will be a

$1 trillion business employing perhaps 2 million workers. And that's

just the beginning, they hope.[2]

 

However, in March the President's Council of Advisors on Science and

Technology issued a lengthy report on nanotech that raised serious

safety questions. The President's Council made the point repeatedly

that nanotech is already finding its way into products (sun screen,

baby lotion, wrinkle-free trousers, tennis rackets, computer hard

drives, and so on) -- but there has been almost no safety research and

nanotechnology is entirely unregulated. The toxicity studies now under

way are " a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, "

according to John H. Marburger III, science advisor to President

Bush.[3]

 

The federal government is pumping at least $1 billion per year of

taxpayer funds into nano research and development (4% of it into

safety studies), and the private sector worldwide is putting up

another $8 billion per year.[2] In addition, individual states[4] are

putting up an estimated $400 million per year, as they vie with each

other to create the next " silicon valley " -- hoping to create jobs to

replace the jobs that have been moved to China by the Wal-Martization

of the economy.

 

In the rush to build this new industry, nanotechnology engineers have

so far neglected to ask, What happens when nano products are discarded

and become nanowaste? (Here we are seeing an exact replay of the

nuclear industry.)

 

David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

thinks the " waste " question deserves an answer: " Who knows what

happens when you grind this stuff up, incinerate it or it goes into a

landfill? These products may be safe in the tennis racket, but all

products become obsolete at some point -- if nothing else because they

go out of fashion. Those teal-colored nanopants are going to be out of

style next year, " he said, only half-joking. " Then what? " [2] Good

question. (The nuclear industry -- 65 years into the enterprise --

still has no answer.)

 

By year's end, even more serious questions had arisen about nanotech.

One of the most popular nano materials is a molecule composed of 60

carbon atoms, which attach themselves together in the shape of a

soccer ball. They are called fullerenes, or bucky balls, after the

famous inventor Buckminster Fuller. Bucky balls have a huge surface

area compared to their volume, so they are highly reactive in a

chemical sense -- they readily glom onto almost anything nearby.

Scientists have been hoping that bucky balls could be coated with

medicines and injected into sick people to deliver specific remedies

to specific parts of the body. Alternatively, EPA [u.S. Environmental

Protection Agency] has been hoping bucky balls could be released into

the environment to detoxify some of the billions of tons of toxic

wastes left over from the previous industrial revolution (which was

based on nuclear and petrochemical evangelism).[5]

 

Last year, nano researchers showed that bucky balls in water could

migrate into the brains of fish.[6] In December, researchers at

Vanderbilt University announced that bucky balls are soluble in

water and will enter cells and probably bind with DNA -- the doubly-

coiled molecule that transmits life from one generation to the next.

Two engineers at Vanderbilt concluded that bucky balls " bind to the

spirals in DNA molecules in an aqueous environment, causing the DNA to

deform, potentially interfering with its biological functions and

possibly causing long-term negative side effects in people and other

living organisms. " Uh, oh.

 

After this announcement, a chorus of complaints arose, urging safety

studies of nano materials, in preparation for " regulating " the

industry. No one in the chorus mentioned that the U.S. has never been

able to effectively regulate the nuclear or petrochemical industries

-- the vast majority of chemicals in commercial use today have never

been safety-tested and 1800 new compounds enter commercial channels

each year almost entirely untested for effects on human health and the

environment. As a practical matter, the chemical industry is

unregulated, and will remain so. As for the nuclear industry, its

dangerous detritus has been spread all over the planet -- radioactive

junk piles of astonishing proportions, under sea, in the artic, in

the northwestern and southwestern deserts of the U.S.[7] Is there any

reason to believe that the nanotech industry will be different?

 

Despite this, a substantial sector of the environmental movement is

committed to the " regulatory approach " and they have teams of

attorneys and scientists ready to spend tens of millions of dollars

trying to impose largely-ineffective regulations on the nascent nano

industry. It's a kind of symbiotic dance between the industry and the

enviros, each helping the other pretend to be scientific and

effective.

 

In June Environmental Defense (formerly Environmental Defense Fund,

aka ED) joined with the American Chemistry Council (formerly the

Chemical Manufacturers' Association, aka ACC) in making a joint

proposal, " which calls for international efforts to standardize

testing and risk assessment protocols for nanotechnology development,

and the drafting of measures to protect human health and the

environment while regulators, industry and the scientific community

continue to research and develop the technology. " [8] In other words,

the chemical industry (which is the nanotech industry) is begging to

be regulated and is proposing the terms of regulation -- we'll deploy

the technology as fast as we can and you regulators will please

develop " regulations " and " risk assessments " after the fact.

 

I suppose a silly sweetheart deal like this allows ED to look like

it's still " a player, " the ACC gets to look " reasonable, " nothing new

is required of anyone, and an unsuspecting public gains the reassuring

-- though entirely false -- impression that something worthwhile is

being done to protect their health and well being.

 

Even if the ED-ACC proposal produces its intended result, the best we

can expect is a replay of the petrochemical century -- except that

nanotechnology is far more powerful than anything that every came out

of a 20th-century chemical lab. The failure to regulate the chemical

industry, if replayed by the nanotech industry, will definitely not be

pretty.

 

But we must ask ourselves, why would this industry ask to be

regulated?

 

So far, the U.S. regulatory system has been even more lenient on

nanotech than it has been on petrochemicals. So far U.S. regulators

have declared that a nanoparticle of titanium or carbon is no

different from a bulk quantity of titanium or carbon, and so no

regulation is needed. Think about that for a minute. If there really

were no difference between bulk quantities of a substance and the same

substance in nano-sized particles, there would be no advantages to

nano particles and therefore no nanotech industry. This U.S.

regulatory foolosophy is clearly aimed at letting this new industry

develop as rapidly as it can, without regard for consequences.

Government regulators are helping the nano industry get products to

market, create jobs, and grow large before anyone notices. After the

industry grows large, then effective regulation will be impossible

because jobs would be jeopardized, thus pitting working people against

public health specialists (who would otherwise be natural allies).

This " divide and conquer " strategy worked like magic with leaded

gasoline, asbestos, and the nuclear industry (among many others), so

there's no reason to think it will fail with nanotech.

 

However, even the evangalists of nanotech recognize there's wild card

in this approach: the public.

 

Without safety testing of nano products, the nanotech industry " is

setting itself up for the same kind of consumer backlash that has

haunted genetically modified foods, " Science magazine observed in

December.[2] No doubt this is what's driving the ED-ACC proposal to

develop " regulations " -- aiming to create the appearance that this

industry is being hemmed in by " command and control regulation "

(sounds strict and effective, doesn't it?) may keep the public dozing,

at least for a time.

 

In addition to providing false but convincing reassurance to a worried

public, " regulations " also serve two other purposes:

 

(1) When people begin to realize they've been poisoned by

nanoparticles, the poisoners will say, " The government approved this,

so I'm not liable. " In other words, the regulatory system legalizes

harm and provides industry an " out " when the stuff hits the fan. This

is precisely the approach that won a $10 billion law suit for Altria

Group (Philip Morris) last week in Illinois.[9] People harmed by

tobacco products said Philip Morris had misled them by selling killer-

cigarettes under the safe-sounding name, " Light. " Philip Morris argued

that government had approved the label so the deadly consequences of

being snookered by the false label were the government's fault, not

the cigarette maker's. The Illinois Supreme Court bought it. So

regulation -- though it may be totally ineffective at protecting the

public -- can protect the poisoners very well.

 

(2) The second reason why the ACC might want regulation is that it

gives big firms a powerful advantage over their smaller competitors.

Big firms may never say so in public, but they love complicated

regulations -- the more complicated the better. They can afford to

hire a staff of lawers and engineers -- " compliance specialists " --

who do nothing but read the regulations and fill out the burdensome

paperwork, bellyaching all the way to the bank. Small firms cannot

necessarily afford to hire " complianace specialists " so they are

ensnared by the rules, tripped up, and waylaid. They spend a greater

proportion of their available funds complying, compared to the big

firms, which reduces their ability to compete.

 

In sum, the fact that the regulatory system doesn't protect the public

is really beside the point -- the system was designed to serve other

purposes. Big industrial firms need regulations to (a) to provide the

public a false sense of security and lull them to sleep; (b) shift

blame onto regulators when the public objects to being poisoned; and

© put small firms at a competitive disadvantage. The enviro partners

of the big polluters play right into this industrial strategy with

eyes wide shut.

 

Safety testing and subsequent " risk assessments " to " prove safety "

provide cover for polluters so that contamination of the planet with

exotic materials can proceed unimpeded. We examined how this works, in

some detail, in Rachel's #831. Initially, contamination of the

planet was an unintended consequence of the risk-based regulatory

system, but now everyone knows how it works, so continuing to rely on

this failed regulatory approach can no longer be justified as

accidental or unintended. We now know exactly what we're doing. We're

making short-term profits at the expense of everyone else who inhabits

the planet, including our children and grandchildren. The " regulatory

system " makes this game possible.

 

It's not hard to figure out why industrial polluters do these things

-- they have no choice. They have one -- and only one -- legal option:

they must return a modest profit to investors, year after year. They

are not permitted by law to do anything else, so their behavior is

predictable. Their task is to shove as many of their costs onto the

public as they possbly can and still remain within the bounds of the

law.

 

But the big enviro groups are set up not-for-profit, so they are not

bound by any fiduciary duty to investors. Therefore they must have

other motives. As I say, this nanotech business is all very mysterious

and marvellous, really.

 

==============

 

[1] Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, editors, Converging

Technologies for Improving Human Performance (Washington, D.C.:

National Science Foundation, June, 2002.

 

[2] Robert F. Service, " Calls Rise for More Research on Toxicology of

Nanomaterials, " Science Vol. 310, No. 5754 (Dec. 9, 2005), pg. 1609.

 

[3] Rick Weiss, " Nanotech is Booming Biggest in U.S., Report Says, "

Washington Post Mar. 29, 2005.

 

[4] States with the greatest nanotech potential are California,

Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Maryland, New York,

Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with Colorado, New Jersey, North

Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington state close behind, according

to Small Times magazine March 12, 2003. Available at

http://rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=298 .

 

[5] Keay Davidson, " The promise and perils of the nanotech

revolution, " San Francisco Chronicle July 26, 2004.

 

[6] " Vanderbilt U. Engineers Question Safety of Nano-Buckyballs, " Dec.

5, 2005. Press release from Vanderbilt University.

 

[7] Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu, and Katherine Yih, Nuclear Wastelands;

A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its health and

Environmental Effects (Cambridge, Mas.: MIT Press, 1995). This 660-

page compendium does not include information about the medical and

industrial uses of radioactive substances, which have created their

own universe of expensive, long-lived problems. And of course the

problem of rogue nuclear weapons falling into the hands of unstable

governments -- Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and perhaps others --

poses yet another universe of dangers of incalculable proportion.

 

[8] " Industry, Environmentalists Offer Plan for Possible Nanotech

Rules, " Inside OSHA June 27, 2005.

 

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 17, 2005

 

POLLUTION ON CANADA RESERVATION IS PROBED

 

By Matt Crenson, AP National Writer

 

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Canada -- Growing up with smokestacks on the

horizon, Ada Lockridge never thought much about the pollution that

came out of them.

 

She never worried about the oil slicks in Talfourd Creek, the acrid

odors that wafted in on the shifting winds or even the air-raid siren

behind her house whose shrill wail meant " go inside and shut the

windows. "

 

Now Lockridge worries all the time.

 

A budding environmental activist, she recently made a simple but

shocking discovery: There are two girls born in her small community

for every boy. A sex ratio so out of whack, say scientific experts who

helped her reveal the imbalance, almost certainly indicates serious

environmental contamination by one or more harmful chemicals.

 

The question: Which ones? And another, even more pressing question:

What else are these pollutants doing to the 850 members of this

Chippewa community?

 

Lockridge and her neighbors live just across the U.S.-Canada border

from Port Huron, Mich., on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Reserve. For

nearly half a century, their land has been almost completely

surrounded by Canada's largest concentration of petrochemical

manufacturing.

 

Much of their original reserve, founded in 1827, was sold out from

under them via questionable land deals in the 1960s. It is now

occupied by pipelines, factories and row upon row of petroleum storage

tanks.

 

The area is so dominated by the industry that it is referred to on

maps and in local parlance as " Chemical Valley. "

 

About two years ago, Suncor Energy -- which already operates a

refinery and petrochemical plant next to the Aamjiwnaang reserve --

proposed adding another factory to the mix, an ethanol plant to be

built on one of the few undeveloped parcels adjoining the community's

property.

 

Lockridge and other members of the band joined to oppose the plant.

They asked biologist Michael Gilbertson to look at a binder full of

technical information about air, water and soil contamination on the

reserve.

 

In a conference call, he reported that the data showed elevated levels

of dioxin, PCBs, pesticides and heavy metals including arsenic,

cadmium, lead and mercury.

 

Almost as an afterthought, he asked a question: Had anybody noticed a

difference in the number of girls and boys in the community?

 

At the other end of the line, the Aamjiwnaang and their allies were

suddenly abuzz.

 

" All of a sudden everybody in that room started talking, " said

Margaret Keith, a staffer for the Occupational Health Clinic for

Ontario Workers, a public health agency.

 

Somebody pointed out that the reserve had fielded three girls'

baseball teams in a recent year and only one boys' team. Lockridge

thought about herself and her two sisters, with eight daughters among

them and only one son.

 

The question was not as offhand as it seemed. " I had been interested

in sex ratio as an indicator -- a very sensitive indicator of effects

going on as a result of exposure to chemicals, " Gilbertson said in a

recent interview.

 

Gilbertson explained that certain pollutants, including many found on

the Aamjiwnaang reserve, could interfere with the sex ratio of

newborns in a population. Heavy metals have been shown to affect sex

ratio by causing the miscarriage of male fetuses. Other pollutants

known as endocrine disrupters -- including dioxin and PCBs -- can

wreak all sorts of havoc by interfering with the hormones that

determine whether a couple will have a boy or a girl.

 

If some pollutant was skewing the distribution of girls and boys in

her family and her community, Ada Lockridge thought, what else could

it be doing?

 

Statistics indicate that one in four Aamjiwnaang children has

behavioral or learning disabilities, and that they suffer from asthma

at nearly three times the national rate. Four of 10 women on the

reserve have had at least one miscarriage or stillbirth.

 

" I was throwing up thinking about what was in me, " said Lockridge, who

is 42. " I cried. And then I got angry. "

 

She got a copy of the band membership list, and tallied the number of

boys and girls born in each year since 1984. Sure enough, the

percentage of boys started dropping below 50 percent around 1993. It

is now approaching 30 percent, with no sign of leveling off.

 

The finding was significant enough to warrant a paper in Environmental

Health Perspectives, a well-regarded scientific journal. Lockridge,

who has worked as a home health aide and carpenter's assistant, was

listed as an author.

 

On a recent autumn day, Lockridge stood in the Aamjiwnaang band's

cemetery. The burial ground occupies a gently sloping patch of ground

sandwiched between a petroleum storage tank farm and a low cinder-

block building with half a dozen pipelines running through it.

 

It is hardly a place where anyone could rest in peace. The building

emits a constant, deafening roar that sounds like a wood-chipper

buzzing through logs one after the next. It is so loud that funeral

ceremonies have to be shouted.

 

One of the oldest headstones in the cemetery belongs to Lockridge's

great-grandfather, who died at least 50 years before Suncor Energy

erected a giant flare tower not 100 yards away.

 

Lockridge was talking about how security guards watch and occasionally

film her as she pulls weeds around her family's plots. Suddenly she

stopped short.

 

" Okay, " she said. " You getting that smell right now? "

 

Traveling around the 3,250-acre Aamjiwnaang reserve is a stimulating

olfactory experience. There are tangy smells, sweet smells and acrid

odors that sting the nose. There is the tarry scent of unrefined

petroleum, and the rotten-eggs stench of sulfur.

 

There's also a " fart " smell, Lockridge said, a " stink-feet " smell and

something that " smells like what the dentist puts on a Q-Tip before he

gives you the needle. "

 

Whenever she detects a distinctive odor somewhere on the reserve, she

makes a note of it and records it on a calendar at home.

 

Lockridge's discovery of a sudden shift in sex ratio suggests a new

pollutant came into the Aamjiwnaang's environment during the early

1990s. And the fact that the decrease is continuing suggests that

whatever that pollutant is, it is still around.

 

So far, nobody recalls anything new coming on the scene during the

early '90s. And the levels of likely suspects such as PCBs and mercury

have actually decreased in the past decade.

 

The sex ratio of newborn babies is normally within a hair's breadth of

50-50, with slightly more boys born than girls. There are very few

documented cases of an imbalance as extreme as the one of the

Aamjiwnaang reserve.

 

During the late 1950s, a severe outbreak of mercury poisoning in

Minamata, Japan, caused a decrease in the percentage of male births.

Mercury and other heavy metals cause the preferential miscarriage of

male fetuses simply because their brains are more vulnerable during

development compared to those of females.

 

Mercury is unlikely to be causing the shortage of boys on the

Aamjiwnaang reserve, however. Though levels of the metal are elevated

on the reserve, the Aamjiwnaang are exposed to much less mercury today

than they were 50 years ago. Back then, poor band members would go to

open toxic waste dumps and extract mercury from the soil by adding

water to it, then sell the metal on the black market.

 

The Aamjiwnaang and their scientific advisers believe it is more

likely that endocrine disrupters are to blame. Dozens of synthetic

organic chemicals can interfere with natural hormones by either

interfering with or amplifying their effects. Because hormones are so

important to the development and healthy performance of the body's

organs, endocrine disrupters have the potential to cause a wide range

of effects, from damage to the brain and sex organs in utero to

decreased sperm production and immune suppression in adults. It is

even arguable that they could influence sexual behavior and violence.

 

In her book " Our Stolen Future, " biologist Theo Colborne worries that

endocrine disrupters may be responsible for " physical, mental and

behavioral disruption in humans that could affect fertility, learning

ability, aggression and conceivably even parenting and mating

behavior. "

 

Some researchers have suggested that endocrine disrupters may be

responsible for numerous alarming trends -- rising rates of testicular

and breast cancer, a higher frequency of reproductive tract

abnormalities, declining sperm counts and increases in learning

disabilities among them.

 

In 1976, a dioxin release at a factory in Seveso, Italy, sickened at

least 2,000 people. Years later, scientists found that men who were

exposed to the highest dioxin levels were more likely to have

daughters than sons. Among men who were younger than 19 years old at

the time of the accident, the ratio was the same as it is today on the

Aamjiwnaang reserve -- two-to-one.

 

At lower doses, the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals are

subtle and have been harder to document.

 

" Not a lot is known, actually, " said Marc Weisskopf, a research

associate at the Harvard School of Public Health.

 

In a 2003 study, he and several colleagues found that mothers who

consumed large amounts of PCB-contaminated fish caught in the Great

Lakes were more likely to have girls.

 

It is extremely difficult to say whether background doses of endocrine

disrupters are having any effect on the general population. Scientists

in many industrialized countries -- including the United States and

Canada -- have documented a subtle decline in the male-to-female ratio

since World War II. But it has been a matter of controversy whether

the decrease is due to industrial chemicals or lifestyle factors and

medical advances, which can also tinker with the sex ratio.

 

There is little doubt that endocrine-disrupting pollutants are

affecting the sexual development of wildlife right where the

Aamjiwnaang live. In Lake St. Clair, not 30 miles from their reserve,

fish are swimming around with both male and female gonads. The

condition, known as intersex, is caused when a young fish that is

genetically male is exposed to chemicals such as the fertilizer

atrazine, which causes female gonads to develop by acting like the

hormone estrogen.

 

The phenomenon has been documented all over the southern Great Lakes -

not just in fish, but in birds and amphibians as well.

 

The Aamjiwnaang are getting increasingly worried and obsessed about

the pollution of their reserve. With every new baby, said Ron Plain, a

member of the Aamjiwnaang environment committee, " we have to worry

what's the matter with that child, five years from now, 10 years from

now, 20 years from now. "

 

Some people have suggested that the whole band should simply pick up

and leave the reserve for a less contaminated place. But Plain wants

to stay and fight.

 

Petitions and demonstrations against the Suncor ethanol plant

eventually convinced the company to choose a location about 10 miles

south of the reserve for the new facility. A Suncor spokesman said

that community opposition was one of several factors that led to the

decision.

 

Now Plain wants to use the band's veto power over new pipelines

crossing the reserve as a bargaining chip: For example, in return for

allowing a right-of-way, the Aamjiwnaang would require establishment

of a fund to set up a network of air monitoring stations. The money

could also be used to clean up hazardous waste sites on the reserve,

or other environmental projects.

 

" The band doesn't have the money for that type of stuff, " said Plain,

who runs his own medical supply company. " If we have a million dollars

we can hire some pretty good experts. "

 

Alan Joseph is not sure he can wait.

 

He has five children -- a boy and four girls. All suffer from asthma;

the eldest girl has liver problems.

 

He used to catch crawfish in Talfourd Creek and fish in the St. Clair

River, less than a quarter mile from his house. Now, if he wants to go

fishing, he drives 25 miles up the shore of Lake Huron.

 

" I really want to move, " he said.

 

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Environmental Health Fund, Dec. 20, 2005

 

A HUGE FIGHT AGAINST THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY NEEDS YOU TO WEIGH IN

 

Dear all:

 

We have until December 30th to comment on the Washington State bill to

protect kids, adults and the environment from unnecessary toxic flame

retardants, especially the one known as " deca. " The bill in

Washington is a bellwether for what we can do elsewhere.

 

The industry is weighing in from all over the country to prevent a

protective bill.

 

We need to weigh in from all over the country to support it.

 

SO PLEASE GO TO www.watoxics.org. The ACTION ALERT will be

prominently at the top of the page and there are quick steps for you

to weigh in. Feel free to mention that the eyes of the country are

upon Washington to see if they will lead with a protective measure for

our families and our environment.

 

To provide more detailed comments please see the note from Ivy below.

 

Thanks for taking the time to support this. Without progress in

Washington our efforts elsewhere are weaker.

 

Judy Robinson

Environmental Health Fund

 

*************

 

FROM IVY SAGER-ROSENTHAL, WASHINGTON TOXICS COALITION

 

Hello,

 

As many of you know, the Washington state Department of Ecology is

getting ready to finalize its recommendations on PBDEs. These

recommendations are critically important for our efforts to pass a

bill banning deca because legislators are looking to Ecology for

guidance. Ecology staff are getting lobbied hard by the bromine

industry and others. We need your help! It would be very helpful if

groups from outside the state could weigh in and support the

recommendation to ban deca.

 

The draft recommendations can be found here.

 

Please send your comments to Mike Gallagher, PBT Coordinator at the

Department of Ecology, by December 30th. His email is

mgal461.

 

Please feel free to contact me (isager-rosenthal) or

Laurie Valeriano (lvaleriano) if you have any questions

or concerns.

 

Thanks! -- Ivy

 

Ivy Sager-Rosenthal

Environmental Health Advocate

Washington Toxics Coalition

4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. Suite 540E

Seattle, WA 98103

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New York Times, Oct. 24, 2005

 

THE COST OF GOLD -- 30 TONS AN OUNCE

 

Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions

 

By Jane Perlez and Kirk Johnson

 

There has always been an element of madness to gold's allure.

 

For thousands of years, something in the eternally lustrous metal has

driven people to the outer edges of desire -- to have it and hoard it,

to kill or conquer for it, to possess it like a lover.

 

In the early 1500's, King Ferdinand of Spain laid down the priorities

as his conquistadors set out for the New World. " Get gold, " he told

them, " Humanely if possible, but at all costs, get gold. "

 

In that long and tortuous history, gold has now arrived at a new

moment of opportunity and peril.

 

The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years -- pushing

$500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic

and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost,

often in some of the poorest corners of the world.

 

And unlike past gold manias, from the time of the pharoahs to the

forty-niners, this one has little to do with girding empires,

economies or currencies. It is almost all about the soaring demand for

jewelry, which consumes 80 percent or more of the gold mined today.

 

The extravagance of the moment is provoking a storm among

environmental groups and communities near the mines, and forcing even

some at Tiffany & Company and the world's largest mining companies to

confront uncomfortable questions about the real costs of mining gold.

 

" The biggest challenge we face is the absence of a set of clearly

defined, broadly accepted standards for environmentally and socially

responsible mining, " said Tiffany's chairman, Michael Kowalski. He

took out a full-page advertisement last year urging miners to make

" urgently needed " reforms.

 

Consider a ring. For that one ounce of gold, miners dig up and haul

away 30 tons of rock and sprinkle it with diluted cyanide, which

separates the gold from the rock. Before they are through, miners at

some of the largest mines move a half million tons of earth a day,

pile it in mounds that can rival the Great Pyramids, and drizzle the

ore with the poisonous solution for years.

 

The scars of open-pit mining on this scale endure.

 

A months-long examination by The New York Times, including tours of

gold mines in the American West, Latin America, Africa and Europe,

provided a rare look inside an insular industry with a troubled

environmental legacy and an uncertain future.

 

Some metal mines, including gold mines, have become the near-

equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity.

Hard-rock mining generates more toxic waste than any other industry in

the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The agency estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal

mines could reach $54 billion.

 

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office chastised

the agency and said legal loopholes, corporate shells and weak federal

oversight had compounded the costs and increased the chances that

mining companies could walk away without paying for cleanups and pass

the bill to taxpayers.

 

" Mining problems weren't considered a very high priority " in past

decades, Thomas P. Dunne, the agency's acting assistant administrator

for solid waste and emergency response, said in an interview. " But

they are a concern now. "

 

With the costs and scrutiny of mining on the rise in rich countries,

where the best ores have been depleted, 70 percent of gold is now

mined in developing countries like Guatemala and Ghana. It is there,

miners and critics agree, that the real battle over gold's future is

being waged.

 

Gold companies say they are bringing good jobs, tighter environmental

rules and time-tested technologies to their new frontiers. With the

help of the World Bank, they have opened huge mines promising

development. Governments have welcomed the investment.

 

But environmental groups say companies are mining in ways that would

never be tolerated in wealthier nations, such as dumping tons of waste

into rivers, bays and oceans. People who live closest to the mines say

they see too few of mining's benefits and bear too much of its burden.

In Guatemala and Peru, people have mounted protests to push miners

out. Other communities are taking companies to court.

 

This month a Philippine province sued the world's fifth-largest gold

company, Canada-based Placer Dome, charging that it had ruined a

river, bay and coral reef by dumping enough waste to fill a convoy of

trucks that would circle the globe three times.

 

Placer Dome, which also runs three major mines in Nevada, answered by

saying that it had " contained the problem " and already spent $70

million in remediation and another $1.5 million in compensation.

 

Some in the industry have paused to consider whether it is worth the

cost -- to the environment, their bottom line or their reputations --

to mine gold, which generates more waste per ounce than any other

metal and yet has few industrial uses.

 

The world's biggest mining company, Australia-based BHP Billiton, sold

its profitable Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea in 2001 after having

destroyed more than 2,400 acres of rainforest. Upon leaving, the

company said the mine was " not compatible with our environmental

values. "

 

After tough lessons, other companies, like Newmont Mining, the world's

largest gold producer, are paying for more schools and housing, trying

harder to ease social problems around its mines.

 

" I don't think any of our members want to be associated with a bad

operation -- notwithstanding it would hurt their ability to open new

facilities, " said Carol L. Raulston, spokeswoman for the National

Mining Association. " News goes around the world quickly now and there

is no place to hide. "

 

Critics say corporate miners have been cloistered from scrutiny

because of their anonymity to consumers, unlike, say, oil companies,

which also extract resources but hang their name over the pump.

 

Last year the mine watchdog group Earthworks began a " No Dirty Gold "

campaign, marching protesters in front of fashionable Fifth Avenue

storefronts, trying to change gold mining by lobbying gold consumers.

 

" They just said to ask where the gold was coming from and whether it

caused social or environmental damage, " said Michael E. Conroy, senior

lecturer and research scholar at the Yale University School of

Forestry and Environmental Studies. " The repercussions in the mining

media were huge -- some said it was all lies, but retailers began to

realize what their vulnerability was. "

 

Mr. Kowalski, Tiffany's chairman, has tried to stay ahead of the

controversy. He has broken new ground by buying Tiffany's gold from a

mine in Utah that does not use cyanide.

 

But the largest sellers of gold are not luxury outlets like his, but

rather Wal-Mart stores, and even Mr. Kowalski, a trustee of the

Wildlife Conservation Society, hesitated to call any gold entirely

" clean. "

 

Asia's Insatiable Appetite

 

Amrita Raj, a 25-year-old bride, was shopping for her wedding

trousseau on a recent Saturday in New Delhi. There was a " wedding set "

to be bought that day, with its requisite gold necklace, matching

earrings and two sets of bangles.

 

For the sake of family honor, the new in-laws would have to receive

gold gifts as well -- a " light set " for the mother-in-law, plus a gold

ring or a watch for the bridegroom, and earrings for a sister-in-law.

 

" Without gold, it's not a wedding -- at least not for Indians, " Ms.

Raj said.

 

For thousands of years, gold has lent itself to ceremony and

celebration. But now old ways have met new prosperity. The newly

moneyed consumers who line the malls of Shanghai and the bazaars of

Mumbai sent jewelry sales shooting to a record $38 billion this year,

according to the World Gold Council, the industry trade group.

 

Over the last year, sales surged 11 percent in China and 47 percent in

India, a country of a billion people whose seemingly insatiable

appetite for gold -- for jewelry, temples and dowries -- has

traditionally made it gold's largest consumer.

 

That kind of demand leads many in and out of the industry to argue

that gold's value is cultural and should not be questioned. The desire

to hoard gold is not limited to households in India or the Middle

East, either.

 

The United States, the world's second-largest consumer of gold, is

also the world's largest holder of gold reserves. The government has

8,134 tons secured in vaults, about $122 billion worth. The Federal

Reserve and other major central banks renewed an agreement last year

to severely restrict sales from their reserves, offering, in effect, a

price support to gold.

 

That price is not simply a matter of supply and demand, but of market

psychology. Gold is bought by anxious investors when the dollar is

weak and the economy uncertain. That is a big reason for gold's high

price today.

 

For miners that price determines virtually everything -- where gold is

mined, how much is mined, and how tiny are the flecks worth going

after.

 

" You can mine gold ore at a lower grade than any other metal, " said

Mike Wireman, a mine specialist at the Denver office of the E.P.A.

" That means big open pits. But it must also be easy and cheap to be

profitable, and that means cyanide. "

 

That kind of massive operation can be seen at Yanacocha, a sprawling

mine in northern Peru run by Newmont. In a region of pastures and

peasants, the rolling green hills have been carved into sandy-colored

mesas, looking more like the American West than the Andean highlands.

 

Mountains have been systematically blasted, carted off by groaning

trucks the size of houses and restacked into ziggurats of chunky ore.

These new man-made mountains are lined with irrigation hoses that

silently trickle millions of gallons of cyanide solution over the rock

for years. The cyanide dissolves the gold so it can be separated and

smelted.

 

At sites like Yanacocha, one ounce of gold is sprinkled in 30 tons of

ore. But to get at that ore, many more tons of earth have to be moved,

then left as waste. At some mines in Nevada, 100 tons or more of earth

have to be excavated for a single ounce of gold, said Ann Maest, a

geochemist who consults on mining issues.

 

Mining companies say they are meeting a demand and that this kind of

gold mining, called cyanide heap leaching, is as good a use of the

land as any, or better.

 

Cyanide is not the only option. But it is considered the most cost-

effective way to retrieve microscopic bits of " invisible gold. " Profit

margins are too thin, miners say, and the gold left in the world too

scarce to mine it any other way.

 

" The heap is cheaper, " said Shannon W. Dunlap, an environmental

manager with Placer Dome. " Our ore wouldn't work without the heap. "

 

But much of those masses of disturbed rock, exposed to the rain and

air for the first time, are also the source of mining's multibillion-

dollar environmental time bomb. Sulfides in that rock will react with

oxygen, making sulfuric acid.

 

That acid pollutes and it also frees heavy metals like cadmium, lead

and mercury, which are harmful to people and fish even at low

concentrations. The chain reaction can go on for centuries.

 

Many industry officials, reluctant to utter the word pollution,

protest that much of what they leave behind is not waste at all but

ground-up rock. The best-run mines reclaim land along the way, they

say, " capping " the rock piles with soil and using lime to try to

forestall acid generation.

 

But stopping pollution forever is difficult. Even rock piles that are

capped, in an attempt to keep out air and rain, can release

pollutants, particularly in wet climates.

 

Cyanide can present long-term problems, too. Most scientists agree

that cyanide decomposes in sunlight and is not dangerous if greatly

diluted. But a study by the United States Geological Survey in 2000

said that cyanide can convert to other toxic forms and persist,

particularly in cold climates.

 

And just as cyanide dissolves gold out of the rock, it releases

harmful metals, too.

 

There have also been significant accidents involving cyanide. From

1985 to 2000, more than a dozen reservoirs containing cyanide-laden

mine waste collapsed, the United Nations Environment Program reported.

 

The most severe disaster occurred in Romania in 2000, when mine waste

spilled into a tributary of the Danube River, killing more than a

thousand tons of fish and issuing a plume of cyanide that reached

1,600 miles to the Black Sea.

 

That spill led to calls for the gold industry to improve its handling

of cyanide. After five years of discussion, the industry unveiled a

new code this month. It sets standards for transporting and storing

cyanide and calls on companies to submit to inspections by a new

industry body.

 

But the cyanide code is voluntary and not enforced by government. And

Glenn Miller, a professor of environmental science at the University

of Nevada, says it does not adequately deal with one of mining's most

important, unattended questions: What happens when the mine closes?

 

A Rocky Mountain Disaster

 

One answer can be found in a rural, rugged area of northeastern

Montana called the Little Rocky Mountains.

 

There, Dale Ployhar often comes to the high bare slopes around the

abandoned Zortman-Landusky gold mine to plant pine seedlings on a

silent hillside that has been reclaimed by little more than grasses.

 

" I bring lodgepole seeds and scatter them around, hoping they'll come

back, " he said, looking out over the tiny town of Zortman, population

50.

 

Zortman-Landusky was the first large-scale, open-pit cyanide operation

in the United States when it opened in 1979. The imprint it left on

the environment, psyche and politics of Montana continues today.

 

What happened there -- a cacophonous, multilayered disaster involving

bankruptcy, bad science, environmental havoc and regulatory gaps -

foreshadowed the risky road that gold has taken in the years since,

mining experts, government regulators and environmentalists say.

 

" There's a lot of bitterness left, " said Mr. Ployhar, 65, a heavy

equipment operator, whose son bought some of the mine lands at a

bankruptcy auction four years ago.

 

Some mining experts say that Zortman-Landusky -- a combination of two

open pits near Zortman and the neighboring village of Landusky -

offered a steep learning curve on how chemical mining worked, and

didn't.

 

Others say that overly ambitious production schedules by the mine's

owner, Pegasus Gold, based in Canada, were to blame. A bonus package

of more than $5 million for top executives, announced after the

company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998, did not help.

 

Mining with cyanide can be tricky even in the best conditions. At

Zortman, the company made the mistake of building their cyanide heaps

atop rock that turned acidic. The cyanide and the acid mixed in a

toxic cocktail that seeped from the mounds.

 

Mining stopped in 1996, and company officials insisted in their public

comments over the next year that they wanted to be responsible

corporate citizens and stay to clean up the property. But the price of

gold was falling, then below $280 an ounce, and Pegasus closed its

doors.

 

" This became one of the worst cases in Montana, " said Wayne E. Jepson,

manager of the Zortman project at the Montana Department of

Environmental Quality. " But even as late as 1990, one of the last

studies for Landusky predicted no acid in any significant amounts. "

 

Environmental risks from hard-rock mines often turn out to be

understated and underreported, according to two recent studies.

 

Robert Repetto, an economist at the University of Colorado, examined

10 mines in the United States and abroad run by publicly traded

companies. All but one, he wrote in a June report, had failed to fully

disclose " risks and liabilities " to investors.

 

The environmental group Earthworks examined 22 mines for a report it

will publish in November. Almost all of them had water problems,

leading it to conclude that " water quality impacts are almost always

underestimated " before mining begins.

 

" The combination of the regulatory approach and the science is what

creates inaccurate predictions, " said James R. Kuipers, a consultant

and former mining engineer, one of the authors of the study.

 

At Zortman-Landusky, the state wrote the environmental impact study

itself, based primarily on information from the company, Mr. Kuipers

said.

 

Montana and other big mining states still often depend on mining

companies for much of the scientific data about environmental impact,

or the money to pay for the studies, state and federal regulators say,

mainly because government agencies generally lack the resources to do

expensive, in-depth research themselves.

 

Some mine regulators defend the practice, saying that having

scientific data supplied by companies with a financial interest in the

outcome is not necessarily bad if the review is stringent.

 

" What is important to make the system work is that state and federal

agencies have the wherewithal and expertise to look at the

information, " said Mr. Wireman of the Denver E.P.A. office.

 

But one lesson of Zortman is that good information is sometimes

ignored.

 

In the early 1990's, an E.P.A. consultant and former mining engineer,

Orville Kiehn, warned in a memo to his bosses that not enough money

was being set aside by the mine for water treatment.

 

Mr. Kiehn's opinion, vindicated today, went nowhere. The environmental

agency had little legal authority then -- and no more today -- to

protect the public from an operating mine except by filing a lawsuit,

as it did in 1995 after Pegasus had already violated federal clean

water standards.

 

The company settled the suit in 1996 and agreed to pay $32.3 million

mostly to upgrade and expand water treatment.

 

At the time, state officials rejected the idea of squeezing Pegasus to

put up more money. This spring, Montana's legislature created a

special fund for water treatment to make up for it, for the next 120

years, at a cost of more than $19 million.

 

Washington is also coming to grips with the failure to plan for the

cost of mining. The Government Accountability Office, the

investigative arm of Congress, sharply criticized the E.P.A. in August

for not requiring metal mines to provide assurances that they can pay

for cleanups, a failure that it said had exposed taxpayers to

potentially billions of dollars in liabilities.

 

For Montana, the Zortman experience was chilling. In 1998, as the

catastrophe was making headlines across the state, voters approved the

nation's first statewide ban on cyanide mining, halting any new gold

projects. They renewed the ban last year.

 

Profit and Poverty

 

Today gold companies are striking out to remote corners of the globe

led by a powerful guide: the World Bank.

 

The bank, the pre-eminent institution for alleviating world poverty,

has argued that multinational mining companies would bring investment,

as well as roads, schools and jobs, to countries with little else to

offer than their natural resources. For the bank, which tries to draw

private investment to underdeveloped lands, the logic was simple.

 

" We invest to help reduce poverty and help improve people's lives, "

said Rashad-Rudolf Kaldany, head of oil, gas and mining at the bank's

profit-making arm, the International Finance Corporation.

 

The bank has worked both ends of the equation. At its urging, more

than 100 cash-strapped governments have agreed to cut taxes and

royalties to lure big mining companies, said James Otto, an adjunct

professor at the University of Denver law school.

 

At the same time, the bank put up money for or insured more than 30

gold-mining projects, looking for profits.

 

Though mining was a small part of the bank's portfolio, it was not

without controversy as accidents mounted. In one of the worst

disasters, in 1995, a mine in Guyana insured by the bank spilled more

than 790,000 gallons of cyanide-laced mine waste into a tributary of

the Essequibo River, the country's main water source.

 

By 2001, the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, imposed a two-

year moratorium on mining investments and ordered a review of its

involvement in the industry.

 

Emil Salim, a former minister of environment of Indonesia, led the

study. " I said, up to now the International Finance Corporation was

only listening to business, " he said in an interview in Jakarta. " I

said, so now let's give some voice to civil society. "

 

Mr. Salim recommended reducing the use of cyanide, banning the

disposal of waste in rivers and oceans, and giving communities veto

power over mining company plans.

 

But the industry complained. And developing country governments said

they liked the bank's loans to gold mines. In the end, the bank

settled on more modest goals.

 

It pledged to make environmental impact statements understandable to

villagers and to back only projects with broad community support. It

also urged governments to spend mining companies' taxes and royalties

in the communities near the mines.

 

But critics and environmental groups say the bank demands little from

the mining companies in return for its money and its seal of approval.

 

The bank's guidelines for arsenic in drinking water are less stringent

than those of the World Health Organization, and mercury contamination

levels are more lenient than those permitted by the E.P.A., said

Andrea Durbin, a consultant to nongovernmental groups pressing for

tougher standards.

 

The International Finance Corporation is drafting new guidelines that

will clarify what it expects from miners, said Rachel Kyte, its

director of environment and social development.

 

But the draft rules give mining companies even more latitude, said

Manish Bapna, the executive director of the Bank Information Center, a

group that monitors the bank. They will make it easier for companies

to evict indigenous people and to mine in some of the globe's most

treasured habitats, he said.

 

Despite the World Bank's two-year review, little has changed, said

Robert Goodland, a former director of environment at the bank who was

an adviser on the study. " The bank insists on business as usual, " he

said.

 

Resistance in Guatemala

 

The first piece of new mining business the bank invested in after its

review can be found today in the humid, green hills of western

Guatemala.

 

Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, a big burly man who mixes politics and

religion with ease, doesn't understand why the World Bank lent $45

million to a rich multinational company for a gold mine in his

impoverished region of Mayan farmers.

 

" Why not spend the money directly to help the people? " he asked.

 

Sprawled across a deep wooded valley, a new mine built by Glamis Gold,

a Canadian company, was chosen by the World Bank last year as a new

model for how gold mining could help poor people.

 

But the mine has faced protest at every turn.

 

At the June 2004 board meeting of the International Finance

Corporation, there was considerable skepticism about its $45 million

loan to Glamis.

 

Members questioned why a $261 million project was creating only 160

long-term jobs and giving money to a " well capitalized " company like

Glamis at all, according to minutes of the meeting provided to The

Times by a nongovernmental group opposed to the project.

 

Others were worried that the I.F.C. was relying too heavily on

information from Glamis about the potential for pollution.

 

The World Bank had pledged to back only mines with broad local

support. But on the ground in Guatemala, opposition boiled over last

December.

 

Angry farmers set up a roadblock to stop trailers carrying huge

grinding machines for the mine. After 40 days, and battles between

police and protesters, the equipment had to be escorted by soldiers.

 

To persuade the villagers of the mine's benefits, Glamis flew 19

planeloads of farmers to a mine it runs in Honduras.

 

But the villagers of Sipicapa still wanted their voices heard. On a

cool Saturday morning in June, more than 2,600 men and women dressed

in their weekend best, with children in tow, crowded into the

community's yards, churches and verandas to vote in a nonbinding

referendum.

 

" We are already regretting that our forefathers allowed the Spaniards

to buy our land for trinkets and mirrors, " said Fructuoso Lopez Perez,

a local mayor. " So we should vote so our children will thank us for

doing right. "

 

At that, a church full of local people raised their hands in a

unanimous show of opposition to the mine.

 

Much of the peasants' fury was informed by Robert E. Moran, an

American hydrogeologist, who was asked by Madre Selva, a Guatemalan

nongovernmental organization, to visit the mine and review its

environmental impact statement.

 

Mr. Moran, who was on the advisory board of the bank's mining study,

found it badly lacking. It did not address the " very large quantities

of water " the mine would use, or give basic information on the

" massive volumes " of waste the mine would produce, he said.

 

Tim Miller, vice president of Central American operations for Glamis,

said the environmental impact statement had been a " working document. "

 

In Guatemala City, the Vice Minister of Mining, Jorge Antonio Garcia

Chiu, defended approval of the mine, saying it followed four months of

consultation.

 

Mr. Kaldany, the I.F.C. official, said the investment and the

environmental impact statement were both sound. " We are a bank, " he

said. " We go on the basis of a business development project. Then, as

well, the bank asks: Are we needed? Are we adding any value? "

 

Glamis had already spent $1.3 million on social programs in the

villages as part of the bank's requirements, Mr. Kaldany said.

 

At the mine, the grinding and churning of new machinery being tested

already echoes across the valley. Production could begin as early as

November.

 

Mr. Miller, of Glamis, said the mine was a winner for the people, and

his company. In fact, he said, Glamis didn't need the bank, the bank

came to Glamis.

 

Bank officials " were anxious to make some investments " in the region,

he said. The company is expecting to gross $1 billion over the life of

the mine, with profits of $200 to $300 million.

 

" That's a return of about 25 to 30 percent, " he said.

 

Ghana: The Social Costs

 

The men of Binsre on Ghana's ancient Gold Coast carry on their own

hunt for gold. Nearly naked, their arms and legs slathered in gray

ooze, they sift through the muck in a large pit, using buckets and

hard hats, looking for any last scrap.

 

So far industrial mining has not lived up to its promise for these men

and their families. They are illegal miners who find work not inside

the highly mechanized mines of Ghana's first-world investors, but on

the fringes, scavenging the waste left behind by AngloGold Ashanti,

the world's second-largest gold company, based in South Africa.

 

Six miners have died in the last several years, most of them overcome

by fumes when waste from the mine gushed into the pit, said Hannah

Owusu-Koranteng, an advocate for the illegal miners. The mine tried to

keep the men out.

 

" We used to use dogs, " said AngloGold Ashanti's chief financial

officer, Kwaku Akosah-Bempah. " Then they said we were using dogs to

bite them. " So the mine stopped using the dogs and the men returned.

 

In the nearby village of Sanso, a few men said they had lost their

land to the mine. Now they carve shafts into a mountain of waste rock,

where they haul, hammer, chip and sift.

 

" You wake up one day and you realize your farm is destroyed, " said

Assemblyman Benjamin Annan, a local politician. " They say they will

compensate but it takes one or two years. So people are compelled to

go to illegal mining, the way our ancestors did. "

 

Industrial-size shaft mining has existed in Ghana for 100 years, but

with the price of gold soaring, more companies are arriving now, this

time bringing open-pit cyanide mines. The investment has been greeted

warmly by the government.

 

Newmont is set to spend a billion dollars on a new mine next year and

on a second mine -- in one of the badly deforested country's last

remaining forest preserves -- in 2007.

 

The World Bank is here, too, preparing to lend the company $75

million. Together, the bank and Newmont say, they aim to show how

social development and gold mining can be married.

 

Newmont compensated the farmers who were moved off their land. It is

offering training for new jobs, like growing edible snails and making

soap. It built new concrete and tin-roofed houses to replace homes

made of mud.

 

But the mine will create just 450 full-time jobs. More than 8,000

people will be displaced.

 

" The house is O.K., " said Gyinabu Ali, 35, a divorced mother of five

children, who recently moved into her gaily painted two-room house,

with a toilet out back, that overlooks several dozen similar units

resembling a poor man's Levittown. " I miss my land where I could grow

my own food. "

 

Near the mine of Newmont's competitor, AngloGold Ashanti, in Obuasi,

only half of the homes have an indoor bathroom, and 20 percent have

running water. With the exception of the brick villas of the company

executives, Obuasi today looks like a vast and squalid shanty town.

 

The chief financial officer, Mr. Akosah-Bempah, said he was offended

by the poor conditions. Most of the company's taxes and royalties had

stayed in the capital, he said, leaving the ramshackle town bereft of

the benefits of gold mining.

 

" Sometimes we feel embarrassed by going to Obuasi, " he said. " Not

enough has gone back into the community. "

 

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi for this article.

 

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

 

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment &

Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are

often considered separately or not at all.

 

The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining

because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who

bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human

health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the

rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among

workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy,

intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and

therefore ruled by the few.

 

In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, " Who

gets to decide? " And, " How do the few control the many, and what

might be done about it? "

 

As you come across stories that might help people connect the dots,

please Email them to us at dhn.

 

Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as

necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the

subject.

 

Editors:

Peter Montague - peter

Tim Montague - tim

 

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